They tore down their L.A. midcentury home and | Real Estate news

The first factor you discover about the Monterey Park home of artist Yi Kai and his spouse Jian Zheng is the swimming pool. Like David Hockney’s pool work, which have a good time the sun-filled landscapes of Los Angeles, the glistening ripples of the pool water reverberate throughout the first flooring, very like the skyline of Los Angeles in the space.

“This house has always been treated not simply as a construction project, but as a continuously evolving piece of art,” says Kai. “Over time, we’ve been refining, altering and reimagining it — a process that reflects the values of both experimentation and transformation.”

The blue swimming pool, a quintessentially Californian characteristic, will not be just a leisure space but a central factor of the new home, which was constructed from the ground up after the 1956 home was torn down. According to architect De Peter Yi, who designed the newly accomplished home for his aunt and uncle in collaboration with architect Laura Marie Peterson, the home’s authentic kidney-shaped pool was meant as a pleasant shock upon getting into the home.

The home’s motion as it curves around the pool “breaks out of the rigid house construct,” Yi says, and it’s a deliberate design selection that symbolizes the mixing of Chinese and American cultural parts.

Yi Kai and Jian Zheng’s 1956 home in Monterey Park before it was demolished.

(De Peter Yi)

The magical high quality of the pool extends properly past the first flooring. Upstairs, an 80-foot-long, curving teak deck, permitted within 50% of the rear setback, rotates around the pool, making the outside areas really feel a lot bigger than they’re. Partial-height partitions body town, creating a sequence of outside spots that really feel like rooms.

“For me, the house was really about opening up specific views and moments to create a series of indoor-outdoor rooms,” Peterson says.

An 80-foot-long walkway creates memorable moments outdoor, Yi says, by “taking something mundane and making it special” by framing the sunshine as it shifts throughout the day.

“We are framing that view,” says Yi, evaluating it to James Turrell’s outside “Skyspaces” (including the “Dividing the Light” open-air pavilion at Pomona College) where Turrell frames a portion of the sky with a constructed atmosphere.

Los Angeles artist Yi Kai, 70, and his spouse Jian Zheng, 65, tore down their authentic 1956 home in Monterey Park and constructed a fashionable, comfy home for their retirement.

Kai, who is Chinese American, says his artworks mix facets of his heritage but are “centered around a single theme: understanding and reflecting on the human condition.”

Look intently, and you’ll see Kai’s creative touches throughout the home. For occasion, an outside spiral staircase, a connection between the deck and the ground-floor storage studio, is a putting characteristic. It’s screened in 9 18-foot picket strips from the couple’s authentic home and painted in crimson and blue with a seven-tier white base — a design that echoes the colours of the American flag.

The outside spiral staircase consists of repurposed wooden from the couple’s demolished home.

Another distinctive characteristic in the home is a long slot, reminiscent of a lure door, that permits Kai to transfer his work from his studio on the first flooring to an attic-like space on the second flooring where he shops them.

Yi Kai and spouse Jian Zheng move one of his oil work through the ceiling of his studio to his workplace on the second flooring of their home. Kai says he bought the thought after visiting Cézanne’s studio in France.

Kai’s work are saved in the home’s workplace on the second flooring.

Yi says his uncle’s deep curiosity in Chinese and American tradition is vividly mirrored in the home’s design. The slope of the roof, for occasion, displays the mid-century fashionable butterfly roofs scattered throughout the predominantly Chinese neighborhood, while the arc of the terrace references historic courtyard homes and gardens in China.

The home was designed to have a low profile in entrance.

Kai, 70, was born and raised in China and drafted into the People’s Army as a railway soldier at age 15. After the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989, Kai fled China and relocated to the United States, where he lived for 13 years in Minneapolis and briefly in Boston, before assembly Jiang and settling in Los Angeles.

In 1998, the couple bought a three-bedroom home close to Jian’s workplace in Monterey Park, which is often referred to as “Little Taipei,” because of the large quantity of immigrants from China residing there. “It was easy for us to integrate into the community,” Kai says.

Eight years later, when Kai bought a job educating artwork at Claremont Graduate University, they rented the home and moved to Rancho Cucamonga to be nearer to Kai’s job.

When the couple started pondering about retiring in 2014, they turned to their nephew for help in reimagining their home so that they may return to Monterey Park.

Colorful furnishings by China-based Pablo, in collaboration with artist Lu Biaobiao, in the lounge and eating room play off the colours, symbols and textures of Kai’s work.

Kai in his artwork studio at home.

After years of working as an artist, Kai had modest goals for retirement: He wished a place where he and his spouse could be comfy. “Peter wanted to design a special house related to art,” Kai says.

Because of logistical and financial causes, they determined to demolish the unique home, which tenants had rented for 16 years, but retain the pool. Today, they’re glad they did. “The pool inspired everything that is special about the house,” Yi says of the project, which included requests for most dwelling space, a first-floor bed room with an in-suite lavatory for aging-in-place functions and an artwork studio for Kai.

“I told him to use his imagination,” says Kai. “I am a first-generation from China. He is a second-generation immigrant. I thought, ‘Let’s take his American ideas and my Chinese ideas and combine them.’”

Structural engineer Halle Doenitz, left, architect De Peter Yi, owners Yi Kai and Jian Zheng, and basic contractor Larry Ton inside the home.

Architect De Peter Yi in the shade of the balcony.

As an immigrant, Kai says he takes great pleasure in the multicultural group that labored on the home project over 30 months. “Our lead designer, Peter Yi, came to the U.S. at age 5 [and] is a second-generation Chinese American,” Kai says. “Gabriel Armendariz, another designer, comes from Mexico and brings a Latino cultural background. Halle Doenitz, our structural engineer, is a Caucasian American woman. MZ Construction has two partners, one from Hong Kong and one from mainland China, and Larry Ton, our contractor, has an arts background.”

Their efforts have paid off. The interiors of the two,200-square-foot home are expansive and ethereal, with straightforward access to the outside. Notably, the outside kitchen, positioned on the other aspect of the indoor kitchen, is a characteristic the couple makes use of daily for their stir-fry recipes.

Palm trees seem in the second-story lavatory window.

Ripples of water from the swimming pool reverberate throughout the rooms of the first flooring.

Asymmetrical home windows throughout both flooring of the home present oblique lighting for Kai’s artworks, responding to the home’s geometry and mimicking its playfulness.

Like the views from the terrace, the sight traces are continually altering — palm trees seem in one window, a neighbor’s tree in another — relying on where you look. “The windows respond to the different views and interesting topography of Los Angeles,” Yi says. “There is beauty in the sidewall and the neighbor’s trees. The views extend the house outwards.”

Similarly, colourful furnishings by China-based Pablo, in collaboration with artist Lu Biaobiao, in the lounge and eating room play off the colours, symbols and textures of Kai’s work.

Upstairs, where a tea room connects to the main bed room and lavatory, all the dwelling space, which incorporates the workplace where Kai shops his work, connects to the wraparound terrace. In addition to 450 sq. toes of balcony space on the second flooring, the terrace provides an further 650 sq. toes of shaded outside space on the ground flooring.

Partial-height partitions give one nook of the outside deck the sensation of a room. “It’s beautiful to watch how the light changes throughout the day,” says Kai.

Though he lives in Cincinnati, the couple’s architect nephew says it was rewarding for him to go to his household in their new home, which finally value $1.5 million to construct. “It has been amazing to see how they use the house,” he says.

Ultimately, Kai hopes to open the home to the public for salons, exhibitions and cross-cultural exchanges.

“America is my home,” he says, “a place where I’ve realized many dreams and achieved both personal and professional success. It is also the place where I wish to give back, by contributing all I can — my art, my knowledge, and my energy — to help enrich American culture in return.”

Adds Zheng: “Everyone can appreciate art, and everyone can love it. But not everyone truly brings art into their daily lives or integrates it with how they live. Our goal is to inspire a shift in mindset, to show that art is something everyone can enjoy and that it can be a meaningful part of everyday life.”