OUTSIDE IN – LAZAR DESIGN/BUILD

by Jennifer Capo 

The Butterfly Roof House -Designer Steve Lazar

Brian Thomas Jones Photography

Y ou walk through a pre-entry pivot door and it’s as if you’re inside a light filled portal, which serves as a transitional space between exposure of the outside world and the privacy of the inside home. The illusion intensifies as you look straight through the home’s main entrance into an atrium and past a great room with a sunken den that opens up to the backyard pool. Your eyes move up to second story, through operative skylights, to the gracefully inverted wings of the roof.  

 

Pre-entry provides a neutral zone from outside world

 

You remind yourself that you’re in the tree section of Manhattan Beach but somehow you feel magically transported. You are inside designer/builder Steve Lazar’s “Butterfly Roof House,” but it feels like you are somewhere pacifically far away. 

 

“I want it to feel like the home is coming out of the earth and not put upon the earth,” said Lazar. This 3,600 square foot home incorporates Pacific Rim design aesthetics with an emphasis on open spaces, geometric angles, lush foliage, and Mangaris wood with a natural oil finish. 

 

The big challenge for most builders in the South Bay is to create an open environment with natural light and still maintain privacy. Lazar’s clients tore down the existing home on the 40 ft. by 112 ft. lot and gave the designer a blank canvas to create a home experience that would reflect their family’s needs in a unique way.  One request, from the wife, was to create an individual space for her husband to keep his loose ends. This inspired three separate entries: a his-garage entrance, a her-garage entrance, and a guest entrance.  Lazar also designed an oversized inverted roof with clerestory windows, open panels, and four ventilating skylights in the center to allow the home to breath, to give it life. 

 

The inverted wings of Butterfly Roof

“They allow direct light in and this opens up the house to the sky,” said Lazar. “A regular roof would cut off the sun but the inverted and clerestory windows protect from weather and lets in sunlight.” 

 

As you walk through the main entry you arrive in an atrium. 

 

“The entire house wraps around this enormous palm tree and foliage in a squared circu lar fashion that is consistent on every level of the home,” Lazar explained. “On the second level where the sleeping rooms are, you can wonder across a bridge and marvel at the sight that the trees are higher than you are.” 

 

The upstairs master bedroom opens up to the atrium and faces the backyard of bamboo and tropical foliage, creating a resort-like feel. Lazar believes it is critical in all of his designs to incorporate the outdoors. 

 

“To invite the outdoors into the house and to allow the indoors to radiate out into the open space,” said Lazar. “The inside and outside become one.” 

 

The interior wall disappears and opens the home to the outdoors

The Butterfly Roof House doesn’t reveal itself from the street level. The mostly wood structure conceals its interior from the neighbors and provides the ultimate sense of privacy. It’s a marriage of form and function. 

 

Lazar developed his craftsman’s hand and vision from years of working in construction, handling and shaping wood. This inspired him to become a builder/designer and now his finely crafted wood is a main feature in many of his homes. Lazar had the satisfaction of putting his craftmanship to work by constructing a small portion of the winged roof. 

 

“The Butterfly Roof House was built as if it is part of the earth coming up,” he said, “ the trunk of a tree.” 

 

For more information visit www.Lazardb.com. To contact Jennifer Capo, jencapo@mac.com. 

Going Nowhere

By Jennifer Capo

 

She moved so quickly that we only caught a glimpse of her silver boot hop on the train.  It must have been the rain pouring down that blurred our vision.   We lost sight of her as the doors shut a split second after she boarded.   It wasn’t even time to for our tailing guy to jump on.   She must have known she was being followed.  I scanned the windows through my binoculars from back to front to find her porcelain face.  As I scanned the rows again, her big clear blue eyes came right into focus as if one eye filled each lens and she was looking directly at me.  She just blinked a few times and then stared with a curious gaze as if she could see right into me.  I had to lower my binoculars from the intensity.  I thought to myself, “What kind of person can see me all the way up here on this tall building?  I whispered aloud,  “Not possible.”

 

 I slowly lifted the binocs again and perused the passengers getting settled until she came back into focus again but this time she stared right at me and started laughing.   “What’s so funny,”  I said aloud with a smile.

 

“What is it?”  Bill asked.  “You got something?” 

 

I steadied my hands and kept peering at her. Wondering if my mind was playing tricks on me and she really could somehow see me with the naken eye.

 

“Nope.”   I said to Bill.   “Got nothing.”  Bill put down his equipment and lit up smoke.

 

I kept my gaze locked on her and deliberately blink my eye three times in a row to make sure I wasn’t losing my mind.   She just looked down and stared at something on the floor.   I let out a sigh and thought about how age is beginning to affect my reasoning…or maybe it was actually age that was making me realize the more I know that the more I realize how uncertain our world has become…and then she shyly turn her head in my direction and blinked real fast three times and then started laughing and stuck out her tongue.

 

I felt my arms go limp as I heard a loud bang on the ground.  The binoculars were still in one piece by the time I picked them up, but Bill was pissed.

 

The trained shoved off and I noticed that something inside of me dropped too.

She Laughed until She Cried

Painting Childhood

I snuggle in my warm down jacket and watch the steam from my coffee lift up into the air.  The coffee shop is cozy with couches and plants and tries a little harder than the typical Starbucks situation.    My girlfriend sits across from me and her eyes are sunken in.  Her father had a heartattack and just died.   He’s gone and she’s experiencing death for the first time.

“Now that the funeral is over, I don’t really want to go back to work and face everyone.”  Natalie says.

“I know.   I felt the same way when I lost my mom.”  I try to commiserate and say.  “I read a pretty interesting line in Joan Didon’s book about grief that said, ‘everyone thinks that once the funeral happens, then it’s over, but that’s not true at all, the hardest part is just beginning’,”  I continued. “It was something like that.”

Natalie rarely had real conversations with me, so I wanted to be honest with her and tell her that it’s going to hurt.   I knew, I had some deaths behind me.

While Natalie leafed through a magazine, my mind wandered to a memory of my mother.

I must have been about 7 years old as I brushed my cheek against the shaggy multi colored rug trying to hear underneath the door.    My parents were pretty social back then and they were in the family room with friends, laughing so hard, that I wanted to be a part of it.  I bent over and put my ear against the small opening of the door.  My little brother ran over and did the same thing.   “Shhhhh.” I whispered.   My mother was laughing and she didn’t stop.   It sounded like a laugh attack and I just couldn’t help my self as I felt this little stir in my chest and my throat got all tickley.   I tried to push the feeling down by holding my breath but my mom was laughing so hard that it sounded like she was crying and I just let out a big belch of laughter too and I couldn’t stop either.   My brother did the same.

“I just wished I would have taken that trip with my dad,”  Natalie said.