Casa De Las Joyas — Michael G. Imber Architects

Set in the foothills of the San Verdugo Mountains just north of Los Angeles, this new Spanish Revival residence by Michael G. Imber Architects reinterprets traditional architectural language through a rich blend of global influences, artisanal detailing and a carefully choreographed relationship between indoor and outdoor life.

“The client grew up on the property and bought it from her parents,” says Imber. “She and her husband lived in the 1950s house for years. It was always her dream to build an exotic Andalusian home with a fountain court here.”

Imber says that the design for the main house, the guest bedroom wing, the outdoor sleeping porch and the pool pavilion was inspired by the client’s experiences traveling through Spain and Morocco, “places where architecture, craft and landscape merge seamlessly.”

The resulting home, which also won a 2026 Julia Morgan Award from the Institute of Classical Architecture & Art Northern California Chapter, is an eclectic palimpsest – a layered combination of lush gardens, traditional forms and finely crafted materials that create a jewel-box environment that’s intimate as well as expressive.

Although the couple tore down the old house, they wanted to retain several mature trees and keep the swimming pool, which they had installed previously, a request that became the driving force of the design.

“The pool was at a 45-degree diagonal in the middle of the site,” Imber says. “This presented a challenge and an opportunity.”

Imber and his team faced the main block of the house to the curb so it’s in sync with neighboring properties that are a combination of ranches and old Mediterranean-style houses, but as you enter, the house turns 45 degrees, creating a main axis that aligns with the pool.

“The building wings were strategically positioned around the pool, using long diagonal axes to create the illusion of greater depth and expansiveness,” Imber says. “This approach not only honored the existing landscape elements but also transformed the pool into a central organizational anchor for indoor-outdoor living.”

Designing around the trees, he adds, guided the shaping of building volumes and outdoor rooms, ensuring that they remained defining features rather than obstacles. Imber’s strategy of shaping and orienting the spaces along the pool’s axis opens the property in a unique way.

“The suburban-sizeed lot makes it feel twice as large,” Imber says. “And in the back, instead of looking straight at a big 1990s house, you see greenscape.”

The house’s massing is grounded in the discipline of historic Spanish Revival precedent. The two-story front façade presents a restrained and timeless simplicity, its calm proportions and minimal articulation evoking the quiet strength of early California architecture.

As the house extends backward into the landscape, the massing becomes more informal. One-story wings wrap the garden in a more romantic and eclectic composition, with playful rooflines, deeply carved recesses and handcrafted details that reflect the spirit of Andalusian villages, reinforcing the narrative of discovery as one moves through the house.

Interlacing indoor and outdoor spaces, Imber created a home that opens to a sequence of outdoor rooms: a sheltered courtyard, a traditional garden framed by stucco walls and espaliered citrus trees, intimate terraces for dining and meandering paths that encourage exploration.

Each of these garden zones is tailored for different uses–quiet contemplation, active recreation or outdoor entertaining–yet all are united through a strong architectural language that ties building and landscape into a series of discrete experiences, each with its own character, and help create the sense of a larger, more private estate.

The sleeping porch off the primary bedroom is, Imber says, “a particularly poetic retreat, capturing cooling breezes and framing views of the garden as an extension of daily life. Each outdoor space is purposefully distinct yet connected, reflecting a lifestyle that values nature as an integral architectural component.”

The varied textures and patterns of materials, including reclaimed terra cotta flooring and roof tile, hand-painted Moroccan tile, coffered wood ceilings, carved doors, and wrought-iron detailing create continuity between interior spaces and exterior gardens, reinforcing the house’s layered, worldly sensibility.

Imber’s design skillfully integrates mechanical systems on the property, which is in a designated “very high fire-hazard severity zone” that required the navigation of a rigorous permitting path.

He used parapets to screen roof-mounted solar arrays and landscaping and site-wall screening to conceal outdoor mechanical, plumbing and pool equipment and lessen the auditory impact of the emergency generator.

The house, Imber says, is the perfect reflection of the client and her dream. 

“It feels joyful, bright, colorful, and clean-lined,” he says. TB