Life of the Party

The house Joe and John Dumbacher built is more than a bold architectural statement on the side of a Pasadena hill; it’s an ideal place for a party. Each year, the twin brothers invite 150 friends to celebrate the Fourth of July and watch the Rose Bowl fireworks from their spectacular top-floor deck. “Our sister-in-law can’t believe we did this for one day a year,” John says, “but, of course, it’s for every time we entertain and all the days in between. We joke that it’s New York loft meets California living.”

The Dumbachers--Joe’s a vice president at Guess Home Collection, John’s a vice president at Univeral Studios--had lived in an antique-filled ‘50s ranch-style house for five years before deciding to build a new house on a nearby vacant lot. Originally, they thought they wanted a Monterey-style home with a two-story columned portico. But after interviewing almost a dozen architects, they chose Hagy Belzberg, a recent Harvard graduate who was then working in Frank Gehry’s office, for his spirit and original ideas. Although he hadn’t yet built anything of his own, the young architect conceived an innovative contemporary design for the Dumbacher house, one that took advantage of the site’s light and views and captured the owners’ imagination. “The options were limited by the steep, skinny site and the need to avoid costly drilling [for reinforcement],” Belzberg explains.

The three-level structure, completed last year, is gracefully tucked into a hairpin bend in the road and discreetly faced in maintenance-free cement stucco and galvanized sheet metal. From the street below, it looks like a yacht emerging from the hillside. The garage burrows into the base of the hill, and stairs lead up to three bedrooms. Guests enter at the upper level and step into a great room with clear maple flooring and 14-foot-high exposed-beam ceilings. Views across the arroyo can be seen through sliding glass doors and from the expansive deck with its prow-like canopy. Complementing this sweep of space are the open dining and kitchen areas and a patio. The living area doubles as a light-filled painting studio; when the Dumbachers, who are also artists, feel inspired to collaborate on their “bandage” canvases, they simply move their eclectic, lightweight furniture aside. Their artistry carried over to the design of the interiors, and Belzberg applauds his clients’ enthusiasm at every stage of the project: “They understood how every door knob and cabinet and chair would relate to the totality of the composition.”

When it was first proposed, this inventive building enraged some neighbors, who waged a costly, bitter battle against it and delayed construction for a year. The Dumbachers, however, never wavered, and eventually the mayor and City Council voted unanimously for approval, apparently convinced by Belzberg’s argument that Pasadena has long cherished landmarks by trailblazers such as Greene and Greene, Frank Lloyd Wright and Craig Ellwood. “Now that the house is complete, it’s won acceptance, which makes us feel a lot better,” Joe says. “When we throw a party, the architecture makes everyone feel alive.”