Los Angeles-based SPF:architects has completed a 5,000-square-foot renovation of a 1970s-era beachfront California modernist home designed by notable mid-century architect Jerrold E. Lomax. 

SPF:a's renovations for the home, which is located in Malibu, California among a tightly clustered outcropping of residences sitting directly on the waters of the Pacific Ocean, offers an updated and perfected take on the original daylight-and-views design approach Lomax lent to the home's design.

A statement from SPF:a explains that the firm's approach for the renovation "focused on using advances in material technology to enhance the original modernist expressions laid out by Lomax that sought to maximize daylighting within."

The firm continues, "Thinner window frames were installed, as were high-performance glazing and glass floors. Similarly, a modest roof aperture was replaced with an operable skylight that stretches along the central axis to thoroughly illuminate the core of the residence. Ocean views, too, are afforded through the front-to-rear span of the floors thanks to judiciously positioned transparent walls and partitions and a reinvigorated plan."

Additionally, the architects removed decorative plaster finishes that marked the home's diagonal structural bracing. A new metal staircase with glass steps was added to the residence that connects all three floors of the building. Regarding the staircase, the firm writes, "An unlikely centerpiece, the brusque aluminum construction brings the home a combination of strength and delicacy, solidity and transparency."

For Zoltan E. Pali, FAIA, Design Principal at SPF:a, the project represents an effort to upgrade and retrofit an iconic existing home while retaining the key stylistic and conceptual elements of the design that lent the structure its original, enduring luster. Pali explains, “It was important to me that the renovation not compromise the ideals Jerry imbued; those being minimalism, functionalism, efficiency, and innovation,” adding, “The resulting transformation is certainly tangible, but this is still very much a Lomax house.”