The Spanish Colonial revival is really a catalog of styles, unified by the use of arches, courtyards, form as mass, plain wall surfaces, and tile roofs, all derived from the Mediterranean world. Designers were inspired by a number of sources: the adobe and colonial buildings of Monterey, California; late forms of Moorish architecture; medieval Spanish and Italian church architecture; Ultra-Baroque design of colonial Spain and Portugal; rural forms from Andalusia; Italian Romanesque and Renaissance revival elements; and southwest Hopi and Pueblo Indian adobes. This broad source base made it relatively easy to create a convincing harmony between the exterior image, interior space, decorative elements, and the building's function. Eclectic as the Spanish revival was, the purity of single elements was often retained, such as an Ultra-Baroque entry decoration. In some cases an entire style source, such as Andalusian, was virtually transplanted. Richard Requa, an architect in the Arts and Crafts tradition, helped launch the Spanish Revival style at the landmark 1915 Panama-California International Exposition in San Diego, CA. The Dolgen House, built in 1926 on Coronado Island, typifies what Requa called his “Southern California Architecture” style, with such interior details as broad, sweeping plaster or stuccoed walls, a curved ribbed ceiling, wrought-iron ornamentation and a massive fireplace in the living room, which would be equally suitable in a villa or hacienda.
The Unmuddling Project.
Mark, the client, inherited a Spanish Colonial revival house. Built in 1921 located atop the Silver Lake hills in Los Angeles, California. This small house had seen many upgrades and its original features had become unrecognizable. The last remodel had bestowed a rather unbecoming Victorian flavour to the place.
When Mark and I first met, he said that everything new could go and he demanded only one thing; “N O L A W N H E R E”! A man after my own heart.
