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first up we've stepped into the past originally designed in the bauhaus tradition by romanian expatriate haralamb georgescu this current out house been totally rebuilt and renovated by architect kurt kruger. nice to meet you. nice to meet you as well. you're the brains behind this? yes, somewhat so. i was the architect that came in after the
original architect that made the masterpiece that was the mid-century architect haralamb georgescu. i mean, that's a big responsibility to take over someone else's work. i mean yeah. does that kind of affect you when you're kind of remodeling? absolutely you're always thinking about exactly how to restore the place properly what to touch what not to touch
how to update a house to today's standards while keeping with the same design aesthetic so it's always that thing that's in the back of your mind that for us was "don't mess this up." and what would georgescu, the original architect do. this is the original house here right and then behind us is a studio, or? this is a guesthouse space behind us.
it's new? yes, that is new. originally here there was an agricultural shed that pre-dated this house. it was probably a turn-of-the-century it was located about here. one of the things that we decided to do was keep the same footprint proportions of that house but elevate it higher and then pull back so that we created this retaining wall for more of a turnaround
driveway space. so the original house was built when? 1968. okay great, the year i was born... okay. so that's a special house then for you as well. absolutely. well can we get inside and take the tour? absolutely, let's do it. oh wow okay i can see what we doing here this is really a 60's house. it is, it's very much so and sometimes people come inside of here and think of it more as a time
capsule and that's the way that we like to see it while at the same time updating it to today's aesthetics and standards. so what did you do inside here that's been changed? what's been changed in here are a few things we changed up or should i say, restored the mahogany paneling and book shelving to where it was originally in the plan
what we did also. oh really so you actually went back to the plans and put things back? we found the set of plants actually right in the storage space right below us here which was a great thing i think it really gave us direction on what the original house was and perhaps what it might want to be. was it still multi-level like it is now? it was multi-level here so the stairs are
original this the loft area. the bones of the building are exactly how it originally was we did not want to touch the original aesthetic of the house. so you changed all the floors, right? absolutely. what were the original ones? the original ones, we had a combination of some tile as well as carpeting. it was ugly.
the original color was purple, right? yes. which is making a come now. [laughter and funky music] the original house was in.. it looked great but it was in in great condition obviously. it had been lived in for quite a while by the same people and they were an elderly couple so the decor sort of showed that, you know. so when we first got in there lots of purple carpet.
lots of furnishings and you know obviously all of their bits and bobs that didn't quite go. well, don't go away after the break we're going to continue our tour of this magnificent home--it's up next. welcome back, well here we are at this amazing modern design. let's continue our tour. we have the main lowerlevel here. we have the study level which is also the main entry level and then the upper level--the loft and bedroom. you know what? i love modern
architecture a new architecture. but there's something about coming into a home like this where there is so much history. that you kind, you kind of go into a trance imagining who lived here. who designed it. what were you thinking. it's so different from today. yes yes. and we've heard that a lot from people that came in here that especially that grew up in during the era
that this house was built and they just said that makes me feel and think a lot about my childhood. well this house was actually being built while i was being born. wow. yeah, and i'm old. this house is old. [laughter] but it looks kind of new. it kind of in fact you could always build this exact floor plan in a modern house today. you absolutely could. and that's where there are so many
lessons for me as an architect that going off of a master like georgescu just seeing how spaces are proportioned and how they feel... the volumes is just it has a certain field that is much more to a human scale that i think a lot of times gets lost in more recent architecture. things are a bit out of proportion at times.
this space just feels right. how cool is the window which goes through the kitchen so you can kind of pass the food? yeah absolutely and that's a pass-through window that's here from the kitchen to the dining space. the original cabinetry this is actually remade exactly to the specification. the original ones we actually replaced it.
the only thing that the different to here is that there was a formica countertop that we replaced with the caesarstone countertops. because this is indestructible. so, the kitchen. you renovated that right? yes we did. so we renovated the kitchen space originally it was a different shape and configuration this was linoleum, checkered dated floors.
paneling inside. formica countertop. was it original? it was part of the original, however it it didn't quite seem like it was part of the rest of the house and maybe you never know at that time people could have been running out of money and you know anything could have happened but it was very dated and so we decided that we needed to definitely spruce it up and update everything.
the back of the home opens up to a dining terrace which steps down to a yard size deck. it includes a pool spa and covered lounge along with a surprising touch of some color on its exterior wall. okay i can see what you see now by the punch of color but the yellow out here. and the nice thing is during the evening
there's two skylights to each side of that fireplace so during the evening when the lights are on it gives us a nice glow that just illuminates that yellow to give a nice shine to it. the deck was all replaced because it was in such bad condition and we extended it and added a few bits and bobs of the day. the actual cantilever decks were
basically so rotted that we had to replace all of those throughout the house so quite an expensive remodel. this is cute; this is great. fireplace? yes. this looks fantastic as well. so fire pit area--so this is a seating area outside where we have the guest house and one of the ideas with this was to be able to have a space that the owners
they could have their parents or guests be able to stay here but it still has a connection to the house. love the sculpture here as well. did you book pop that in? we did and actually that is done by the son of the original architect. he is an artist himself so and he in fact remembers when this house was being built. his father
taking him to this site so a generational connection. and that was put in with you guys right? that was put in with us. what a great signature. yes, yes. to add to the whole project. well that's what we thought was the most important thing is that making sure we had this generational connection of you know you have the father and then that
you have his son here with the sculpture and then of course we have you know the new modern guest house. i feel sorry for anybody who wants to tear this down because they've got no chance. right. you've been amazing. thank you so much it was a pleasure. thanks and let's do something again soon. absolutely.