{"id":399110,"date":"2026-07-15T08:39:15","date_gmt":"2026-07-15T08:39:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/399110\/"},"modified":"2026-07-15T08:39:15","modified_gmt":"2026-07-15T08:39:15","slug":"discover-a-refreshed-mickey-muennig-house-in-la","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/399110\/","title":{"rendered":"Discover a refreshed Mickey Muennig house in LA"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sitting among tangles of oak and Monterey pine, on the lip of a canyon in Carmel-by-the-Sea, Owl House is part art, part architecture, its rich contradictions impossible to grasp at a glance. The redwood structure looks different from every angle, emerging onto the street like a fox’s den hollowed out of the brush, or perched like a massive nest from the canyon behind. Where it looms largest, however, it is also generously glazed, giving it the all-seeing gaze of its namesake. Inside, it feels exposed, enclosed and, in some places, both. Sculptural, layered and textural, it offers a series of inhabitable collages that are rigorous in their geometry, reverent toward nature, but playful nonetheless.<\/p>\n

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\"Interior\n<\/p>\n

In the living room is a sofa by George Smith, upholstered in red wool boucl\u00e9 by Holland & Sherry, a walnut slab coffee table by Jeff Martin Joinery, an oak and sycamore TV lift credenza by KGBL, a cast glass and fibreglass table lamp by Flack Studio for Volker Haug, a rug by Christpoher Farr, a pair of vintage chairs by Carl-Gustaf Hiort Af Orn\u00e4s, and a sculpture by Sheila Hicks<\/p>\n

(Image credit: Unknown)<\/p>\n

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\"renovated\n<\/p>\n

(Image credit: Douglas Friedman)<\/p>\n

Discover this refreshed Mickey Muennig house in LA<\/p>\n

Designed in the early 1970s by architect Mickey Muennig, the house was restored in 2024 by landscape architect Bernard Trainor of Ground Studio. Then last year, its interiors were renovated by Wallpaper* US400<\/a> honoree Nicole Hollis’ San Francisco<\/a> design studio for a pair of empty nesters, who use it as a weekend retreat. Like so many things that come to define the identity of a place, the house’s Californian aesthetic was created by a transplant.<\/p>\n

Muennig, who would come to be known as \u2018the man who built Big Sur’, moved to California<\/a> from Missouri and the Midwest. Having studied under Bruce Goff, he travelled to the nearby Esalen Institute in 1971 for a Gestalt therapy workshop and never returned home. Instead, he began to design unusual buildings, using organic forms and local materials that bridge indoors and out. On a ridge above Big Sur, Muennig embarked on private architectural experiments that embraced nature, light and views: a stone and glass teepee with a bed suspended in its conical crown surveyed the sea, while a boxy house nearby featured tiered, spiralling redwood ceilings and a living room bisected by running water.<\/p>\n

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\"Mickey\n<\/p>\n

(Image credit: Douglas Friedman)<\/p>\n

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\"Mickey\n<\/p>\n

(Image credit: Douglas Friedman)<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, he was also designing lush coastal homes and celebrated Northern California destinations: the Baths at Esalen, the Hawthorne Gallery, and the plush Post Ranch Inn, whose guest rooms took the form of treehouses and burrows with wildflower-sown roofs. Architecture became an extension, even a totem, of the landscape, a link between human and nature. The Owl House had presaged themes that Muennig would play with in much of his later work.<\/p>\n

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\"renovated\n<\/p>\n

(Image credit: Douglas Friedman)<\/p>\n

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\"renovated\n<\/p>\n

(Image credit: Douglas Friedman)<\/p>\n

Also a transplant, from the southeastern coast of Australia<\/a>, Trainor became a temporary steward of the house in 2023. His restoration stabilised and protected materials ranging from the copper roof to wooden decks. \u2018It was a passion project that combined art and design, and it brought together years of learning along the way,’ he says. In late 2024, when a longtime client bought the house, Hollis and colleague Adele Cunningham set to work with great restraint. The result is clarifying, drawing the architecture to the fore and making room for its new residents.<\/p>\n

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\"renovated\n<\/p>\n

(Image credit: Douglas Friedman)<\/p>\n

Essential to Muennig’s design are moments of sculptural intensity. The entrance operates as a human-scale collage featuring radial trusswork, a semicircular skylight, layered doorways, cut-away walls, and a tilted demilune clerestory window. Wooden collages by Japanese artist Kishio Suga, chosen from the couple’s existing collection by consultants Mary Zlot and Sabrina Buell, resonates with the house’s language of fragmentation and flow.<\/p>\n

To their credit, Hollis’ team cleared the space instead of filling it. They opted for materials that complement rather than contrast, and fewer furnishings that, no matter their age, might have always been there. \u2018It’s a small house, so I didn’t want to overwhelm or overthink it,’ says Hollis. \u2018You don’t want to crowd that architecture. You want it to sing.’<\/p>\n

Receive our daily digest of inspiration, escapism and design stories from around the world direct to your inbox.<\/p>\n

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\"renovated\n<\/p>\n

(Image credit: Douglas Friedman)<\/p>\n

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\"renovated\n<\/p>\n

(Image credit: Douglas Friedman)<\/p>\n

Hollis understood the architecture as tactile as much as it is visually extreme. Texture here serves as a unifying principle, with expressive wooden ceilings and terracotta floor tiles. \u2018We thought, are the tiles too busy? They’re so graphic,’ Hollis recalls. \u2018But then we all got used to them, and now we can’t imagine the house without them.’ Harmonising with the redwood and the brass of the fireplace, colourful textiles add cosiness and energy to each room.<\/p>\n

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\"renovated\n<\/p>\n

(Image credit: Douglas Friedman)<\/p>\n

Like texture, geometry is palpable throughout, from the hexagonal tiles to the curving walls. In the kitchen, revitalised cabinetry is faced with vertical slats in varying widths, while a globe pendant and loop-base table echo the house’s porthole windows. Because the plan resembles a nautilus shell (with bedroom walls curling into cylinders that contain baths), Hollis commissioned rugs from Vaheed Taheri and brought in rounded furnishings with circular or semicircular oversize pulls.<\/p>\n

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\"renovated\n<\/p>\n

(Image credit: Douglas Friedman)<\/p>\n

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\"renovated\n<\/p>\n

(Image credit: Douglas Friedman)<\/p>\n

To keep the interiors relaxed, Hollis’ team either met the house’s whimsy halfway with curved pieces and happy hues, or stepped back to let it play out. They didn’t touch the mushroom-shaped window above the kitchen sink, or the mezzanine’s pony wall, cut away in a shallow arc that Hollis describes as \u2018a smile’. But they brightened the living room with a green sideboard by Matthew Raw and a red sofa by George Smith: \u2018Items that one might not want to live with every day,’ she says, \u2018but that help create an escape from everyday life.’<\/p>\n

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\"renovated\n<\/p>\n

(Image credit: Douglas Friedman)<\/p>\n

Outdoors, the garden continues to be a passion project for Trainor, who wove together plant species such as banksias and persimmons to make it feel \u2018as if you were walking through a painting<\/a>‘, and designed a cedar and brass fence that gambols across the undulating terrain, echoing the language of the house. The result is not a backdrop but a blossoming that feels as whimsical and wild as the architecture it embraces.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

nicolehollis.com<\/a><\/p>\n

bernardtrainor.com<\/a><\/p>\n

This article appears in the August 2026, Creative America issue of Wallpaper*,<\/a> available from 2 July in print on newsstands, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sitting among tangles of oak and Monterey pine, on the lip of a canyon in Carmel-by-the-Sea, Owl House…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":399111,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[7,9,8],"class_list":["post-399110","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-california","tag-california","tag-california-headlines","tag-california-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/399110","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=399110"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/399110\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/399111"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=399110"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=399110"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=399110"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}