\u201cUgly\u201d was the first thing that came to mind when Los Angeles architect Zoltan Pali came upon his home of 13 years.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re not moving up here because the house is intensely ugly\u2014it\u2019s a really, really, really bad piece of architecture,\u201d Pali recalled thinking when he saw the 1980s stucco house set on 17 acres in Topanga, California\u2019s Santa Monica Mountains.<\/p>\n
But his wife and business partner, architect Judit M. Fekete-Pali, had other ideas, and before he knew it, they owned the place.<\/p>\n
That was 13 years ago when the couple, co-founders of the awarding-winning firm SPF:a, were living on the top floor of their office space on a major commercial street in Culver City.<\/p>\n
MORE:\u00a0Late Billionaire Bob McNair, Former Texans Owner, Planned for a Houston Penthouse That\u2019s Now Done and Asking $11 Million<\/a><\/p>\n Pali, who restored and renovated the Greek Theatre in Los Angeles\u2019s Griffith Park and did renovation work on the Lacma West building, is a self-described \u201curban guy.\u201d<\/p>\n He thought their living situation was a great arrangement.<\/p>\n But Fekete-Pali longed to live with the birds, deer and coyotes in the mountains in what she viewed as God\u2019s country.<\/p>\n They both knew that this house would challenge their creativity.<\/p>\n \u201cIt had been built by a Greek dentist,\u201d Pali said. \u201cIt had fake foam Corinthian columns on the exterior and was like somebody\u2019s vision of the Parthenon but in stucco and foam or a scene from [the 2002 movie] \u2018My Big Fat Greek Wedding.\u2019 And it was octagon shaped, but it wasn\u2019t a pure octagon, it was an elliptical octagon.\u201d<\/p>\n And the interior, also flamboyantly decorated, was no better.<\/p>\n \u201cThere was no thought process to the 1980s design,\u201d Pali said. \u201cWe were trying to figure out how to turn the darn octagon into a box.\u201d<\/p>\n That never happened because the city and county wouldn\u2019t allow them to deviate from the original unorthodox footprint.<\/p>\n \u201cOnce we embraced the shape and then worked with it on the inside, it really turned into something quite lovely,\u201d Pali said.<\/p>\n On the exterior of the 8,000-square-foot house, they removed extraneous elements, including the foam columns and overhangs, creating what Pali, who is 65, calls a \u201cmonolithic geometry.\u201d<\/p>\n The fact that the house is in a high-risk fire zone had a huge impact on their design.<\/p>\n \u201cThe first two years we were living here, we had a major fire that almost came into the house,\u201d Pali said. \u201cAnd we\u2019ve had friends who have had their places burn down.\u201d<\/p>\n They came up with an unusual solution to fireproof the facade: They covered it with black Class-A fire-resistant asphalt shingles that are hexagonal in shape.<\/p>\n The highly textured shingles, which are silvery in the light, attract climbing lizards, \u201cso there\u2019s this wonderful relationship to the nature around us,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n The color, he added, is a big bonus.<\/p>\n \u201cThe house used to be a giant white stucco box,\u201d he said. \u201cYou could see it from miles around, but you can\u2019t see it now. It falls into the shadows behind the trees, and it makes the property really blend into nature.\u201d<\/p>\n In addition to installing the interior sprinklers required by code, the couple added exterior ones that blend into the asphalt shingles.<\/p>\n The original concrete patios, which are all around the house and six-car garage, also act as fire deterrents.<\/p>\n The couple also removed about 35 highly inflammable palm trees and replaced them with fire-resistant California pepper trees.<\/p>\n The other trees, some of them 40 to 50 feet high, are out of reach of the house and are kept trimmed.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s literally no way for a fire to get started on or around the structures on the property,\u201d Pali said.<\/p>\n Inside, the renovation followed a simple path.<\/p>\n