This article originally appeared in the September 2011 issue of Architectural Digest.
Among the handful of architects working today who could be called purists, few names are more venerated than that of John Pawson. The minimalist spaces he designs, whether a boutique for Calvin Klein on Madison Avenue or a monastery for Cistercian monks in the Czech Republic, offer a singular interpretation of austerity that still manages to feel utterly luxurious. So there was much anticipation when the London-based Pawson began making sketches for a house in Los Angeles on a spectacular three-acre hillside site; it would be his second freestanding building in North America (a 2001 residence near Telluride, Colorado, was his first). Considering the architect's rigorous standards, it shouldn't come as a surprise that the design phase took four years, and construction another four.
Now that the house is complete, it is most striking for its understated calm. "It's a family house, which is what the clients wanted," Pawson says. "And yet it's still a piece of architecture."
Ellen and Andrew Hauptman, a low-key couple with two children, are entrepreneurs and philanthropists; he is a film producer (State of Play, Millions) and owner of the Chicago Fire Soccer Club, while together they actively support causes such as City Year, an educational mentoring program for inner-city students. The pair also have highly evolved aesthetic sensibilities. Ellen's grandfather Samuel Bronfman commissioned New York's iconic Seagram Building, which her aunt Phyllis Lambert had a hand in along with Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. "I was interested in hearing their anecdotes about Mies and Phyllis," Pawson says. "But Andrew and Ellen are very much their own people. They are going their own way."
The couple met Pawson when they were living in London in the 1990s and hired him to design the interiors of a townhouse they'd bought; they subsequently developed a friendship with him and his wife, Catherine, and became steeped in the Pawson philosophy. "It has affected the way we live," Andrew says. "We don't really collect art or have many things. John talks about how a lack of noise—by which he means clutter and other distractions—leads to more intimacy. That's something we have really experienced."
Intimacy was exactly what the family wanted of their new home in L.A., even though it would amount to 20,000 square feet. Pawson achieved this goal through a number of clever moves. To keep the house in proportion to the landscape, he planned a subterranean floor that would accommodate mechanical equipment and storage as well as staff quarters, a children's playroom, and a screening room. Aboveground, Pawson conceived of the dwelling as two elegant, horizontally oriented boxes: a smaller one for the main level, clad in pale Halila limestone, and cantilevered atop that, a larger one of stucco and red-cedar siding.
Within the house, the ground-floor public rooms—kitchen, living room, dining room, study—are configured around a dramatic central staircase, flowing into one another without doors. There are four bedrooms upstairs, three of which have terraces, the master bathroom's boasting a hot tub and a fire pit. Throughout the house not a single hinge, light switch, or baseboard is visible. Achieving such seamless simplicity was, needless to say, a challenge. "Everything in John's work is so precise that we went through a million iterations," Andrew says. "Contractors were pulling their hair out."
To supplement the furnishings Pawson designed for the project, the couple tapped the smart L.A. team of Alexandra and Michael Misczynski, or Atelier AM, who helped them source pieces by such 20th-century masters as René Gabriel, Eugene Printz, Børge Mogensen, and Diego Giacometti. The designers also worked with them on textiles, which Pawson tends to use very sparingly. For the bedroom, Atelier AM commissioned a handwoven mohair rug by Sam Kasten, a bespoke weaver based in Massachusetts and Paris. Kasten also created a sublime gold silk fabric for the bedroom walls; it was made in one 15-foot width so there would be no seams.
"I loved working with John," Michael says. "He was open to everybody's ideas and incredibly collaborative." That view might come almost as a disappointment to some design devotees who relish the architect's standing as the high priest of severity. "I know I have a reputation," Pawson acknowledges. "Truth be told, sometimes my clients are more extreme than I am." Yet he cannot deny the perfectionism that drives him to devise houses like this one. "That's what they come to me for," he says.
But let the ultimate judges of Pawson and his latest creation be the littlest Hauptmans. Budding minimalists at ages eight and ten, they gamely stow their toys in the finely crafted cabinetry in their rooms. "They know if they leave their stuff lying around, it's impactful," Ellen says. And so the children have added a new word to their vocabulary: As they are fond of saying, "This is Pawsonesque."
