Spreading The Word

An ocean breeze cuts through the late-afternoon heat and drifts across the threshold of the floor-to-ceiling windows that define the front of Greg Reitz’s Culver City home. Natural light filtered by treetops brightens the white space without additional help, and well-placed views target the best of the modest neighborhood and the undeveloped Baldwin Hills parkland beyond. It’s all just as Reitz imagined it would be--simple, efficient and quite beautiful. He leans back on a black ottoman, one of only two pieces of furniture in his still-unfinished two-story Modernist space, and smiles. “There is a lot you can do for free when you’re building green,” he says. “It’s a matter of taking advantage of what you’ve got. Just putting the windows in the right place, you can cool and heat the house for nothing.”

Reitz is a man of strong beliefs founded on good intentions. For him, the economics of building green are just as important as its virtuous aspects, and he preaches that message for a living. At 33, Reitz is the green-building advisor for the city of Santa Monica, where he provides resources and support for both residential and commercial builders. “I’ve always said, ‘You can do it right, and it won’t cost much more,’ so I wanted to prove it really was true,” he says.

Nearly three years ago, Reitz bought a small two-bedroom house on an 8,100-square-foot lot zoned for two units with the idea that he’d preserve the existing residence and build an environmentally sensitive one in back. He thought he’d use the old house as income property and design the new structure for himself, using architectural software and applying concepts that he’d acquired over the years. He realized, however, that even simple design problems often are better resolved by a professional, so he interviewed 10 architects and settled on Roger Kurath, principal of Design21 in Marina del Rey, who is Swiss-born and had worked extensively on environmentally friendly housing in Europe. Kurath agreed that keeping the 900-square-foot 1920s house made sense, but nixed Reitz’s idea that the two should match architecturally. He offered up a simple and very modern design, and Reitz concurred, seeing the potential to achieve something more architecturally ambitious than anything he’d dreamed of.

Working closely and exchanging ideas for materials, Reitz and Kurath have created a 1,675-square-foot three-bedroom, two-bath residence that sits atop a four-vehicle carport. In fact, it was the need for parking that was the catalyst for the building’s raised-up plan. “The city required four car spaces for two residences,” Kurath says, “so I thought, ‘If you have to take that much space for cars, why not lift the house and leave the parking open so it can be a terrace that can be used for entertaining?’ That way the house becomes like a treehouse.” It’s also a nod to Swiss architectural master Le Corbusier, whose iconic Villa Savoye also is raised above an open terrace.

Reitz served as general contractor and made sure that the materials selected had little impact on the environment. To guide him, he often referred to the life-cycle analysis available on the website www.athenasmi.ca, which takes into account waste generated in the creation of any product and the impact on water, air and other aspects of the environment. Following these guidelines, and to avoid future termite problems, Reitz framed the house with mostly steel, although some wood products were used as well. Whenever possible, recycled materials were the first choice, such as the granite-like countertops made from marble shards mixed with concrete. The flooring is low-cost polished concrete, which contains hot-water coils that will radiate heat and warm the house in winter. An efficient natural-gas hot-water heater is supplemented by a solar panel that heats the floor’s water as well as all water needed for household use. And catalytic window shades, not yet installed, will shield rooms from the sun when needed and break down the volatile organic compounds released by other materials in the home into nontoxic compounds. Reitz admits that like most building projects, costs rose above early projections, but he says the final budget remained within his reach--the project cost $330,000, or about $200 a square foot.

“The things I ended up spending extra money on usually weren’t the sustainable features,” he says. “They were design features. The few green things that are more expensive tend to be things that will pay back over time.” The cost of building on the second story, for example, was more than it would have been at ground level, but the improved airflow and a better view make the house more comfortable and inviting.

The floor plan is simple, with a large loft-like space serving as the living room, kitchen and dining area. Lined with a wall of windows on one side and virtually formaldehyde-free IKEA cabinetry on the other, the elongated room will use rugs and minimal furnishings to define the different living spaces. The three bedrooms and baths, all relatively small but each including closet space, are at the back of the house and are planned to accommodate the family that Reitz hopes to have one day. “People think they’re building a house for now and don’t often think of the house being there in 50 years,” Reitz says. “This is not a large house, but it’s good-sized and provides what’s going to be needed to suit the neighborhood.”

In the meantime, he plans to use his experience as a calling card to spread his beliefs, which he describes with missionary-like zeal. He’s even built a website--www.thishealthyhouse.com--to spread his message. “When I got out of school, I was a business consultant, and I didn’t feel that my life was being spent on anything that made a difference,” he says. “The reason I went into green building was to make a difference, and this was an opportunity to get that information out to the world.”