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.
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