Sculpting Space on
the Coast
Architecture by Ehrlich Architects/Landscape Architecture
by SSA Landscape Architects
Text by Patricia Leigh Brown/Photography
by Erhard
Pfeiffer Published January 2009
Architecture is about being open to the discovery
of the inevitable,” observes Los Angeles architect
Steven Ehrlich. “You just listen to the logic.”
In Aptos, California, a quiet beach community just
south of Santa Cruz, the inevitable came in the form
of a corner lot, a breathtaking stretch of ocean, a
neighborhood of intrepid walkers and a gregarious retired
couple from Los Angeles with enough zest for life to
relish it all.
“We were driving down the Pacific Coast Highway,
and suddenly I saw a super stainless-steel-and-concrete
house,” Leland Zeidler recalls of the first trip
he and his wife, Marian, took to meet their architect. “So
I made a U-turn on eight lanes. My wife thought I was
nuts. When we got to Steven’s office, he told
us he’d designed that house. He does some phenomenal
work.”
Compared to its Mediterranean-style neighbors on the
ocean bluff, the jewel-like compound that Ehrlich has
designed for the Zeidlers is an exercise in sculptural
simplicity, with subtle reverberations of Morocco and
Japan. The two buildings—a two-and-a-half-story
main house and a separate guest structure—align
to form an interior courtyard with a lap pool and an
outdoor kitchen, one of three outdoor spaces on multiple
levels where the couple entertain.
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