Index | Project Specs
	Click here for slide show. Photo © Cristian Costea

Newport Beach, Calif.
LPA, Inc.

By Ingrid Spencer

The pressures for architects designing their own homes can often keep them at the drawing board forever. The house has to be a masterpiece—a poster child for the architect’s design principles, paid for, this time, by the architect. For Dan Heinfeld, FAIA, president of LPA—an Irvine, California-based architecture, planning, interior design, landscape design, and graphics firm that specializes in sustainable architecture—designing a home in Newport Beach, California, had all the expected stress, and then some.

“This house was an opportunity for me to practice what I preach,” Heinfeld says of the 4,500-square-foot home he designed for himself, his wife, and their teenage daughter. “It’s hard to sell green if I don’t live it.”

Heinfeld began designing the home, which occupies a 9,000-square-foot corner lot at the top of a knoll about a mile from the beach, to take advantage of the cool California climate. The two-story, four-bedroom, four-bath house wraps around a central courtyard on three sides, with pocket glass and screen doors opening it up to the outside space (and a solar-heated pool) on the southwestern side. A double-height great room becomes larger still when the doors are open and concealed in the walls. Private spaces, including three of the four bedrooms, are located upstairs to the sides of the great room, with a perforated plywood “bridge” on the second story between them. Materials are simple and cost-effective, with recyclable elements used whenever possible.

Putting his money where his mouth is, Heinfeld included 5.3 KW photovoltaic panels in the roof, which provide for virtually all of the home’s energy needs. Other green features include a Glulam (glued, laminated timber) and composite beam structure, a roof that overhangs on southwestern-exposed sides, an almost windowless eastern orientation, operable windows and mechanical sunshades in all rooms for shading and cross-ventilation, an insulated yet translucent skylight in the great room, a re-circulating hot water pump, and efficient lighting throughout. The simple muted palette includes painted plaster on the exterior, Douglas fir cladding and white-painted drywall (VOC-free paint) throughout the interior, terrazzo floors and maple kitchen cabinets downstairs, and recycled-content carpet tiles upstairs. “We chose to put our money into the volume of the house,” says Heinfeld, “rather than into expensive materials.” Part of that volume included a four-car garage located on the north side of the house (“We don’t actually have four cars,” says Heinfeld, “and one of the cars we do have is a hybrid.”).

Heinfeld brought LPA in to do the landscaping. Rocks, plants, and modern cement elements are pleasingly arrayed on all sides of the Xeriscaped landscape, adding to the simple elegance of the house. All in all, it’s an entire package that Heinfeld says even passed muster with his toughest customer, his wife. “She wanted me to treat her as if she was a real client,” he says, “so I had her sign off on the plans.” And while he admits that his daughter isn’t as sold on modern design as the rest of the family, he says the house has enough space for everyone to have their own personalities. “Her room is where she lives, and she can do what she likes with it,” he says. A true California household, with conscience included.

Gross square footage:
3,800 sq. ft.

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