FEATURES

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"The house was in good condition," explains Groves. "It was all about keeping the spirit of it, but taking the edge off and opening it to the outside, then layering textures back into it to give the house a lot of life." Opening it involved very literal tactics—adding skylights and enlarging windows—as well as more subtle ones. The decks leading into the front of the structure and out the back to the pool are a prime example of the latter. The front deck was small and pitched steeply toward the facade; the back deck, Groves says, "was a small section off the house with an opaque, three-foot-high perimeter wall made of stucco that separated it from the pool; there was no engagement with the exterior landscape."

Groves ripped out the old decks, replacing them with a series of wide ipe wood deck platforms that had better proportional relationships to the structure and enabled a more graceful descent to ground level. This created an easy, natural flow to the outdoors. (He also stripped the incongruous Doric columns supporting the entry pediment down to their steel cores, which jibed better with the home's modernist sensibilities.)

Inside, says Groves, "We wanted the house to feel very holistic, for spaces to flow into each other." The home's "edge" came from its stark, white-box aesthetic. So although Groves kept the palette primarily white to achieve unity and flow—even removing the "nasty orangey finish on the oak floors" and pickling them—he explored an array of shades on fabrics and surfaces, subtly changing paint finishes from room to room. Then he layered on texture: linens, cottons and raw silks on the furnishings; abaca, sisal and wool-loop rugs; accessories swathed in suede and leather; a travertine-topped coffee table on a painted bronze base.

The architect also designed much of the furniture, emphasizing natural finishes to add still more tactility. For example, the entry console table is flat-cut oak that was heavily sandblasted, bleached and limed.