Las Urbanistas

MICK HILLEARY, an industrial designer who builds zoo exhibits and trade show displays, and who expanded into residential pools five years ago, has found that Americans have a clearly defined idea of what constitutes a proper swimming pool.

“It’s a white-tiled thing,” said Mr. Hilleary, whose company, Total Habitat, in Bonner Springs, Kan., specializes in what could be called the opposite of the white- or blue-tiled things found in millions of backyards across the country.

The “natural pools” that Total Habitat builds are bordered with wood, planted with lush vegetation and free of chemicals like chlorine; they resemble nothing so much as a swimming hole. “It’s natural-looking, like a pond,” Mr. Hilleary said. “But the water looks so clean. People really want to swim in it, more than in a farm pond.”

Natural swimming pools (or swimming ponds, as they are called in Europe, where the concept originated 20 years ago) are self-cleaning pools that combine swimming areas and water gardens. Materials and designs vary — the pools can be lined with rubber or reinforced polyethylene, as in the case of Total Habitat’s, and may look rustic or modern — but all natural pools rely on “regeneration” zones, areas given over to aquatic plants that act as organic cleansers.

The pools have skimmers and pumps that circulate the water through the regeneration zone and draw it across a wall of rocks, loose gravel or tiles, to which friendly bacteria attach, serving as an additional biological filter. Unlike artificial ponds, which tend to be as murky with groundwater runoff and sediment from soil erosion as the natural ponds they’re modeled on, in a natural pool the water is clear enough to see through to the bottom.

The pools, which cost about the same as or slightly more than conventional ones, depending on landscaping, appeal to gardeners because of the great variety of plant life that can be grown in them, as well as to green advocates and others who don’t want to swim in chlorinated water.

“Many, many people don’t like chlorine,” said Bryan Morse, who runs a landscaping company in Vista, Calif., called Expanding Horizons that builds water features and branched into natural pools five years ago. Taking advantage of the Southern California climate, Mr. Morse created a sort of jungle lagoon in his own backyard, building a natural swimming pool with a thatch-roof palapa and a regeneration zone filled with tropical foliage like Madagascar palm and varieties of canna lilies.

The business is hardly a growth industry, at least in the United States. Total Habitat has built eight natural pools, mostly in the Midwest. (Mr. Hilleary said he has formed a trade organization, the Natural Swimming Pool Association, “to protect the integrity” of the industry; he has certified himself under its requirements. The group has only two members, Mr. Hilleary and Michael Littlewood, a builder in England.) Mr. Morse said he has built four pools, including his own, mostly for “ex-hippies.”

The pools are more popular in Austria, where a company called Biotop has been designing them for residential and public use since 1986 and now installs about 50 a year, according to Peter Petrich, Biotop’s owner and the person credited with inventing the concept.

Mr. Petrich said he and his colleagues have given much consideration to why natural pools haven’t caught on in the United States and have concluded that “perhaps in Europe people have more contact with nature and life is not so clinical.”

Toni Schneeweiss of Biotop said that private pools in Austria, unlike those in the United States, generally do not require building permits, which can be harder to obtain for projects using unfamiliar technology. But it is also true that natural pools are not well known in the United States, and that it is hard to find people to build them.

For builders like Mr. Hilleary and Mr. Morse, natural pools are a side business, and mainstream pool contractors don’t seem to offer them at all. Penny Johnson, the chairwoman of the Association of Pool & Spa Professionals, an industry trade group, said she had never heard of the concept until she was asked about it for this article. She expressed skepticism about the technology. “I don’t know how plants could filter the water for bathing use,” she said, adding that in her experience outdoor pools have to be “shocked” with chemicals to kill bacteria.

Asked about safety concerns, Mr. Petrich said that the water in the natural pools his company builds meets European Union standards for bacteria levels and that the risk of swimmers becoming sick is “very low.”

One American homeowner who has such a pool, Jim Smith, a 45-year-old computer programmer who lives in a suburb of Wichita, Kan., said he learned about the pools in a sales pitch given by Mr. Hilleary at a home show in 2002. Mr. Smith and his wife, Susie, who is an avid gardener, decided to build a natural pool with a miniature waterfall, plants like hornwort and anacharis and a 40-foot recirculating stream that would run past their living room windows. (Mr. Smith said he spent about $50,000 on the pool, or $20,000 more than he estimates a standard pool would have cost; he attributed the higher cost in part to elaborate landscaping.)

The couple, who have two daughters, had a chlorinated pool at a previous home, and Mr. Smith said the transition was difficult. “It took us the first year to learn how to deal with the water,” he said, referring to the way natural pools can become overgrown with algae. “In a regular pool, you just put chlorine in and shock it.”

Indeed, algae is the great scourge of the natural pool world, for aesthetic reasons more than anything else. “It’s very important for people that their water be clear,” said Mr. Petrich, whose pools in Europe use plants to starve algae of nutrients.

Algae tends to be a problem in the first year of a pool’s existence and then to clear up significantly once the plants have grown large and developed a root system, he said. (Each spring, natural pools will go through an algae phase anyway, Mr. Morse said.) But given algae’s sliminess and the widespread view of it as disgusting, Mr. Hilleary has taken additional measures to stem the growth of algae and eliminate bacteria, installing ultraviolet sterilizers in the pump area.

Mr. Morse said he adds trace amounts of chlorine — less than the amount found in tap water — which reacts with silver and copper beads housed in the pump area and has a similar effect.

Still, owners say that once they adjust to the idea of their pools as living ecosystems and master the maintenance particular to natural pools — trimming dead plants; fishing debris and the occasional snake or turtle out of the water — there are advantages. Watching the seasons change is one. “In the spring, all the wildflowers come up,” Mr. Smith said, both in and near the water. “In December, the pool ices over and becomes gorgeous.” Two ducks spent the last month visiting the Smiths’ pool.

There are also the elaborate landscaping and design possibilities. The regeneration zone can be along the perimeter of a natural pool or on one side of it, separate from the swimming area, and, as Mr. Hilleary says, “a person can go to town with water plants,” like marsh marigolds and water lilies.

Bill Johnson, a petroleum engineer in Wichita, built a natural pool at his family’s house last summer with two waterfalls and a bordering wall built of massive boulders — a design that would have been difficult with a conventional pool, he said, because the concrete liner might have buckled under the weight. “With the natural pool I don’t mind if the ground shifts a little,” Mr. Johnson said. “It gave us flexibility with the landscape.”

Mr. Littlewood, a landscape designer in England who has built 35 natural pools in southern England since 2001 and wrote a book on the subject, “Natural Swimming Pools,” said a natural pool blends into its surroundings in a way that a “turquoise box” cannot. “It’s beautiful to look at all year round,” he said, “and you can educate your children about the ecology.”

Some owners of conventional pools have also begun turning toward more organic-looking styles, said Gina Samarotto, a designer at All American Custom Pools and Spas in Norwalk, Conn., who has noticed an increased demand for landscape features like boulders and native plants around pools. She added that she has also seen an increase in the popularity of copper-silver ionization systems that significantly reduce chlorine content.

Whether Americans will go for the natural pool remains to be seen. For those who do install them, Mr. Smith offered some advice born of experience. “I wouldn’t say they’re for everyone,” he said. “You can’t be uptight and unable to wait on nature to repair things.”

Algae, he said, “is natural, and healthy water is going to have some algae.”

One more tip: “Kids like to throw algae.”

BOB BEITCHER says he and his wife, Carol, want their newly built home in Santa Monica to be a showcase of sustainable practices “without being granola-y, if you know what I mean.”

Their house off San Vicente Boulevard has been carefully designed by architect Warren Wagner to optimize solar energy and the use of recycled and renewable materials. Yet the modernist dwelling seems more about the panache of architectural possibilities than the virtuousness of green design.

Seen from the busy boulevard, the facade is energetic yet understated, as if it had power in reserve. The hip-looking exterior is covered in Western red cedar, stucco-covered block and unfinished sheet metal. The upward-tilting roof seems to float above ribbon-like windows at the ceiling line, without external supports.

A closer look, however, reveals that the house is sustainable down to its foundation. A two-story opening in the center acts as a thermal chimney, pulling the hot air out of the house while drawing in cool air, all through an automated skylight. The walls are insulated with recycled denim, made from the remnants from a blue-jeans factory. Twelve photovoltaic panels supply 85% of the home’s power needs, while 10 solar thermal panels supply the house with hot water and radiant heat for the floors and heat the swimming pool.

“The primary thing is that the house has an architecturally interesting design, and the punch line is that it’s got all these sustainable design features,” Bob Beitcher says.

His interest in green design was sparked a decade ago when a house designed by Wagner arose in his neighborhood. “I was dragging everyone over there to see it,” he recalls.

When the family decided to build a new house, sustainability seemed preordained. “It never occurred to us to do it any other way,” says Carol, whose four children include a vegan chef. Their children also “had plenty of input” on the design of the house, she adds.

The Beitcher house is the latest in a series of recent Westside houses — Pugh + Scarpa’s Solar Umbrella house, also in Venice; Ray Kappe’s prefab house in Ocean Park; and the Ehrlich house in Santa Monica by John Friedman Alice Kimm Architects — that have excited interest for their design and sustainable features.

THE combination of architecture and environmentalism is the credo of Wagner, who founded W3 Architects in Venice in 1993 to “demonstrate the integration of solar and sustainable technologies into the highest level of architecture.” He earlier earned his graduate architecture degree at UCLA and worked for several years with passivesolar-design pioneer Edward Mazria in Santa Fe, N.M.

Wagner also is a modernist who counts R.M. Schindler, the Viennese-born architect who created many boldly geometric homes in the hillsides and canyons of Los Angeles, among his artistic heroes. He calls his own style “warm Modernism.”

“Architecture is about one form doing several things,” he says.

The shape and siting of the Beitchers’ house on a corner lot is a case in point.

Rather than position the house in the center of the lot, as most architects do, Wagner pushed the house north, almost to the sidewalk on San Vicente, to maximize the size of a south-facing courtyard and to capture as much sunlight as possible.

This long-and-narrow configuration also fits the Beitchers. An open plan makes the living room, kitchen and dining room — all furnished in comfortable contemporary furniture by interior architect Tracey Loeb — into a single, continuous space.

The sliding-glass doors open onto a courtyard that unifies the garden and pool with the living areas. The result is a communal setting for the close family. The Beitchers have two teenagers living at home and two adult children.

As if to make a witty commentary on the close connection between the living room and the courtyard, Wagner located the fireplace outdoors, where it takes the form of a decorative fire pit, with a bed of black sand. The surrounding xeriscape was designed by Sasha Tarnopolsky of Dry Design.

The shape of the house also provides privacy: The rear of the house has a separate entrance that leads to a second-floor breezeway that opens into a guest room, which the Beitchers call “the crash pad,” available to their adult kids on visits. The rear entrance allows visitors to enter the house at all hours of the night without disturbing the rest of the family.

The 4,000-square-foot, four-bedroom house is large enough for Carol to have a separate room for quilting. Located on the shorter side of the L-shaped floor plan, this rooms allows Carol, a confessed “clutterbug,” to work in her own space. The west-facing wall gives her a full view of the courtyard and the living room. “You can be aware of all the activity that is going on in the house,” she says.

Bob and Carol’s bedroom is upstairs, above the quilting and media rooms. The master bath features rough-hewn carved limestone on one wall, a slatted floor of sustainably farmed Paulope wood and a shower lined in honed limestone.

Also upstairs on the landing is a sunny room with windows in three directions plus a skylight that offers an unobstructed view of San Vicente and the joggers on the central median. The landing is furnished with a daybed and a low table, where the Beitchers plan to plop down and read together.

ALTHOUGH Bob Beitcher, who is president and chief executive of Panavision, could afford a showier home, his aim is to make the house into a demonstration of green living.

The house is scheduled to be featured on three tours (see accompanying story) even before the owners have fully moved in. Despite all the green materials and special techniques, the house cost $310 per square foot to build, not including the cost of land or landscaping, according to the architect.

The interior finishes are part of that demonstration: Amber bamboo flooring has been used to clad the ceiling (it was difficult to apply, because workers had to make the ceiling perfectly flat before installing the flooring upside down) but the material wins compliments from visitors. The interior stairs are made of wood harvested from palms that are too old to bear fruit and would otherwise go to waste.

Even more radical, for this high-end house, was the choice of comparatively humble strawboard — a composition material made of compressed straw — for their kitchen cabinets and shelves in the TV room. The kitchen cabinets have a clear finish that highlights the material’s natural light brown, gold-flecked color, while the TV room shelves are stained a bluish gray. “We were blown away by how quiet and dignified it looks,” Carol says.

The choice of unusual materials is one of the issues that Wagner says most excites him about sustainable architecture. “Sustainability brings in a whole array of new materials to use,” he says. “Some are cruddy looking, some are OK, and some, like the straw board, are very good looking.”

The architectural sophistication of the house contrasts strikingly with the first passive solar houses built in the 1970s. Although idealistic, these houses were often clumsy and idiosyncratic-looking, and gave environmental architecture a bad name for decades.

“The first houses tended to be too diagrammatic,” says Deva Berg, a design architect at W3 Architects, referring to the steep roofs and awkwardly mounted solar panels in some early passive solar house that attempted to align themselves precisely to sun angles for 100% efficiency.

“The fact that the early homes were made of high-mass adobe set them apart as alternative architecture,” says Richard Schoen, professor emeritus at UCLA and one of Wagner’s former instructors. Passive solar technology, he adds, became associated with the counterculture and its anti-modern, utopian ideas.

By the 1980s, passive solar housing “ceased to be an issue, period,” Schoen says. “There were two or three generations of architects who had no idea as to what constitutes passive solar design.”

The growing awareness of global warming has helped architects embrace energy-saving design and construction. The construction of homes and buildings, coupled with heating and cooling of these structures, contributes to about 50% annually of all greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S., according to the American Institute of Architects.

The new standard is the zero-energy house, a dwelling that consumes no more energy than it produces.

Solar pioneer architect Mazria, Wagner’s former employer, has started an organization known as Architecture 2030, to promote the zero-energy goal, while the American Institute of Architects and other professional organizations have started their own emission-reduction programs.

“Now, we are coming full circle,” says Schoen. “Zero-energy housing is becoming mainstream and architects will have to catch up.”

Wagner says that the didacticism of the 1970s has been replaced by a more inclusive, artistic approach. At the Beitcher house, the architect laid the photovoltaic panels flat on the roof rather than at an upward angle facing the sun because he did not want the panels to be visible and disturb the design of his facade. By lying flat, the panels lose 5% of their efficiency. Wagner shrugs.

“As an aesthetic decision, it was more important to lay the PVs flat than maximize their overall efficiency. They work well enough to accomplish all they need to do.”

Although Bob expects to entertain many of his friends and contacts in the entertainment industry at the house, he does not see Carol and himself as standing on a soap box for green design. He thinks the house will speak for itself.

“”We prefer to be quiet evangelists.”

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home@latimes.com

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(INFOBOX BELOW)

Look inside the `green’ home

“Greenies,” architectural and design buffs and the newly environmentally conscious can get a firsthand look at the Beitcher house inside and out during three tours over the next two months:

Friday: CA Boom 4 architect-led tour of Santa Monica homes. $75 for the shuttle tour, includes admission to the design show at Barker Hangar at the Santa Monica Airport, 3021 Airport Ave. The first shuttle leaves Banker Hangar at 11:12 a.m., the last one at 2:36 p.m. The buses run continually in between. Reservations strongly suggested. For information, call (310) 394-8600, http://www.caboomshow.com .

April 28: Third Annual Santa Monica Green Gardens Tour, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Advance tickets $30, tour day $40 ($25 for seniors), van tour $60. Proceeds benefit the Virginia Avenue Project. Tickets and information are available at (310) 264-4224, or at http://www.virginiaavenueproject.org .

May 19: Venice Art Walk Architectural Tour. Self-driven, docent-led tours of green homes in Santa Monica and Venice, 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., featuring works by John Friedman Alice Kimm Architects, Warren Wagner, Ray Kappe, David Hertz and Victoria Yust. Tickets are $50. Proceeds benefit the Venice Family Clinic. http://www.venicefamilyclinic.org/index.php?view=art_architecture .