Rising steeply above a ravine in the Hollywood Hills, Nina and Andreas Grueter’s concrete home conjures a villain’s lair in a James Bond thriller — John Lautner’s Brutalist Elrod House in “Diamonds Are Forever” comes to mind — with the nearby Hollywood sign adding to its cinematic allure.
For some, a narrow hillside lot might seem like a risky location to build a home, especially at the end of a dirt road along Mulholland Highway. But for the globe-trotting European developers, it was an exciting challenge they were willing to take on.
“Are you afraid of heights?” Andreas asked as we ascended one of the home’s many staircases to the rooftop deck. “We are working on a zip line from the beach to here,” he said jokingly when he reached the top floor, which has been featured in the “Forever Sunday” music video by KeshYou and Snoop Dogg and a commercial for the World Series featuring Saweetie.
As developers of visionary projects for Snow Hill Development, including an art hotel in the North Atlantic off Canada and a sustainable home in Yucca Valley, the couple was immediately interested when they saw the for sale sign on the empty lot while hiking in Griffith Park.
“We do everything from buying the land to designing the interiors,” Andreas said of their projects.
After contacting the owner, who had several properties around the country, the couple purchased the 10,500-square-foot lot for $40,000 in 2012. Little did they know that it would take more than a decade to build a home on the challenging site.
“It was meant to be,” said Andreas. “The land was looking for us, not the opposite.”
This sense of destiny is palpable in the Grueters’ connection to the land, which is shrouded in a canopy of mature sycamores. The property offers sweeping views of Beachwood Canyon, and “on a clear day, you can see Catalina,” Nina said as hikers stopped nearby to gape at the house like it was an attraction. “Yesterday, we saw the ocean and the islands.”
With a desire for a contemporary, iconic building, the couple sought out Why Architecture, where architects Yo-ichiro Hakomori and Kulapat Yantrasast, known for their work on the Grand Rapids Art Museum in Michigan, were commissioned to bring the Grueters’ vision to life.
“We wanted our home to be as sleek and clean as possible,” said Andreas, who grew up in Switzerland in a clean-lined Bauhaus home.
After Hakomori left the firm, he continued to help Why to secure the building permit and planning approval. Once the Grueters received a building permit, they continued construction with StudioHau, which Hakomori founded.
Hakomori never thought the site was impossible to build on, based on other hillside homes such as Rudolph Schindler’s Wolfe House on Catalina Island, but the lot’s unique topography presented numerous challenges during construction, from ensuring the structure’s stability with more than 35 caissons to managing the permitting process and meeting with multiple neighborhood planning committees.
Andreas discussed some of the challenges faced during construction. “When we started building, everyone underestimated how hard it would be to get the concrete trucks up to the site,” he said. “The roads were narrow, and the trucks couldn’t be too long or too big. One company even refused to drive up there. For a long time, it looked like it would not happen.”
For Hokomori, who has worked with architect Tadao Ando and his mentor, Frank Israel, the project was unlike anything he had created before. But after contemplating several stacked forms, he ultimately designed a home made of sustainable board-form concrete with three L-shaped frames — with the living areas sandwiched in between them — that extend over the steep hillside to take advantage of the views.
Adhering to strict hillside height regulations, Hakomori designed each level of the four-bedroom, four-bath house to be directly connected to the outdoors. “We tried to create outdoor spaces even though they hover above the ground,” he said. “The house is literally hovering above the landscape.”
Composed of four floors, the 4,455-square-foot home offers a different experience at every level. There is a car elevator that can house two vehicles (because of the city’s parking requirements for their street). Also, there’s a sauna, an office and a walk-in wine cellar and a dramatic wading pool, which cantilevers off the living room, has specially designed windows built into its side that open to the kitchen, imbuing the room with a soft glow when the pool changes color with the sunlight.
At the bottom of the multilevel design sits a separate guest house, where a deer the couple have fondly named Hugo is a frequent visitor.
And then, there is the Hollywood sign. Los Angeles has many inspiring hillside homes, from Lautner’s Chemosphere to Frank Lloyd Wright’s George Sturges House, but none has the Hollywood sign in its backyard like the Grueters’ home does.
“It’s larger than life,” Hakomori said of the familiar icon. “It’s so much bigger than you realize — just like in the Ed Ruscha paintings. It almost overpowered the site.”
But from the bottom, he said, the views make you “feel like you’re in a cave. While at the top, you feel like you’re in the air.”
Balancing the natural world is integral to Hakomori’s architectural practice. Born in Japan before his family moved to Boston, the USC professor said, “I’m very influenced by the indoor-outdoor movement and California Modernism. It stems from attending school in Japan, seeing all the Japanese architecture, living in California and experiencing the integration of nature.”
The Grueters appreciate Brutalist architecture, especially when it is embedded in nature. Still, as intriguing as the house is from the outside, it’s their home. “We wanted to give the construction soul by filling it with beauty, joy and art,” Andreas said.
For the couple, the home’s design was a collaborative effort, a labor of love that they infused with their unique style. “We do this together,” Andreas said. “It’s like magic. It’s fun, like turning a black-and-white movie into color.”
The couple decorated the interiors with bold, saturated colors, including velvet drapes and wallpaper from Paris in tiger and botanical prints. Their style, which Nina described as “contemporary, cool design mixed with a warm and inspiring ambiance,” reflects the Grueters’ love for art and beauty.
Given the limited wall space due to the surplus of glass, the couple’s extensive art collection is installed in surprising places, such as over windows, drapes and also inside the car elevator, which has been featured in a Lamborghini commercial. “We had to add the elevator per city regulations because parking is tight, so we turned it into something beautiful,” Andreas said.
The interiors are often whimsical, including a photograph of the notorious obsessive-compulsive Howard Hughes displayed in a closet and a portrait of Hollywood legend Humphrey Bogart in one of the guest rooms.
“Everyone loves this room,” Nina said with a laugh as she stepped onto the guest room’s shady outdoor patio. “It feels like you’re embedded in the trees.”
However, for the couple, the most fascinating aspect of their new home is that they live among nature, just 10 minutes from Hollywood Boulevard.
“In the evening, it’s so quiet here,” Nina said of living near Griffith Park. “You can see the stars and hear the owls.”
“Every hour is different,” added Andreas, “and after 6 or 7 o’clock, it’s a little spooky.”
Contrary to noted Los Angeles architect John Lautner, who once said that Los Angeles was “so ugly it made me physically sick,” the couple has fallen in love with their adopted city.
“L.A. has such beautiful energy,” said Nina, who is German. “No one in Europe can believe the combination of nature and city life here. We have the Hollywood Bowl, museums, mountains, culture, fantastic food and diversity.”
Despite being one of the Grueters’ most challenging projects (the couple declined to share the project’s cost other than the fact that it was more expensive than they had anticipated), that L.A. spirit infuses their home.
“Every single phase was difficult,” Andreas said. “But at sunset, the house turns into something special. The whole property has an incredible energy. It was worth it.”
