Gabrielle and Michael Boyd are avant-garde collectors and enthusiasts and have been on a quest to live in an environment that’s a comprehensive, from the furniture to the house.

They had managed to accumulate a vast library of modernist books and avant-garde furniture and had already bought and restored three previous house before they came across Oscar Niemeyer’s Strick House, his only residential home outside Brazil.

Oscar Niemeyer is of course the legendary Brazilian visionary and architect of the capital Brasília who also worked collaboratively with other architects on the United Nations building in New York. He was however banned from even entering the country for his residential commission by film director Joseph Strick and his wife Anne because of his associations with the communist party and the house was designed via aerial photographs and topographical surveys. Niemeyer never actually visited the site and it was built by letter and phone calls – hard to imagine in this day of email, skype and mobile phones.

The 4,600 sq ft house sits upon the Santa Monica hillside overlooking the fairways of the Riviera Country Golf Club and is built in a T shape. As Anne Strick recalls they were very specific about the details with a high ceiling in the public spaces, low in the private and level changes in the living area. When the Boyds purchased the property in 2002 it had become destabilized by seismic shifts in land values and needed some attention. Luckily it is a well-built house which didn’t need restructuring but mainly cosmetic updates.

Much to the Boyd’s delight the T shaped layout works perfectly for a family with the stem of the T defining the main living area including kitchen and dining terrace and a fireplace at the far end. The fun part was furnishing the house where the couple could chose from their vast collection of mid-century pieces, keeping the more fragile ones for the library.

The garden design was another important element for the Boyds as the meaning of the design was based on inside-outside living and they wanted to bring out the sense that this is a Niemeyer building with a feeling of the Brazilian landscape. So now palms and ferns populate a front and back garden paved with curved paths that wind between ink-drop formations.

Michael and Gabrielle Boyd are delighted with their home and sum it up by saying:

We’re living in a sculpture, and the sculpture works perfectly. It’s minimal, clean and Constructivist but actually functions as a residence. The design makes us live differently. When we’re inside, we’re outside with the plants.

If you’re interested in avant-garde and mid-century modernism take a look at Alex Bruces blog The Importance of Being Modernist.

Enjoy and I hope you’re inspired!

More information | Boyd Design
Architect | Oscar Niemeyer
Photography | via Architectural Digest