SUNDAY STORY:Architect on the edge

NEWPORT BEACH — In building design, there’s outside the box — and then there’s never even resembled a box, with multi-layered curving rooftops and sweeping expanses of glass.

Those curves and sweeps are the hallmark of Newport Beach architect Brion Jeannette.

His buildings have names like the Aquarium and Soar — and who wouldn’t want to live in one called Paradise?

Jeannette, 60, designed a Beverly Hills enclave for the Sultan of Brunei, and he dreamed up the famous Portabello estate, which may still be on the market with its $75-million price tag.

Another career highlight, he said in a recent interview, is when “I convinced a Saudi sheik that he needed to do energy conservation in his home. He went for it. That was pretty cool.”

A small, slender man with a tidy mustache, dressed in a style just shades away from being called dapper, Jeannette is the guy who will unfailingly shake your hand when he greets you. Everything about him could be called neat, and that goes for his buildings too.

A native of Bellflower, Jeannette got his architect’s license in 1974, when he was 26, and started his Newport Beach firm the same year.

He’s always been inspired by Spanish architect Antoni Gaudi, whose organic style reflects the shapes of nature, but he also admires the modern, metallic creations of Frank Gehry.

The Gaudi influence can be seen in Jeannette’s latest proposed project in Corona del Mar, a bluff-top luxury condo development called the Aerie, with swooping segments of roof, irregularly spaced windows — and seemingly no square corners.

“It’s kind of out there, on the edge, kind of contemporary,” Newport Beach City Councilman Ed Selich said of Jeannette’s style. As a former planning commissioner, Selich has seen several of the architect’s designs.

At the moment, Jeannette is only doing homes, but he’s designed public buildings, like the crowd-pleasing county library branch in Rancho Santa Margarita, which has a high ceiling and elevated windows to let in light.

“We get comments all the time,” branch manager Carla Hope said. “People love to come here because it’s a warm and welcoming building.”

If you don’t like Jeannette’s architectural style, many of his projects have a redeeming quality: They’re energy-efficient.

In terms of “green building,” he’s got the credentials.

As a young architect, Jeannette was invited to work with the California Energy Commission to develop new standards for building efficiency.

But his interest in efficient design goes back further, to when he was studying architecture at the University of Arizona.

There, he said, green building was just as part of the curriculum.

Years ago, he said, “I was sort of out there by myself. Very few architects were doing it.

“We’d have clients who would come in and say, ‘I don’t need any solar stuff,’ and we’d just say ‘OK’ — and we’d do it anyway.”

Jeannette’s friendliness and professional demeanor stand him in good stead even with people who balk at his projects. He recently invited members of environmental group Stop Polluting Our Newport to review the Aerie so he could answer their questions and build support.

“I think Brion is a good architect,” said Allan Beek, a member of Stop Polluting Our Newport. “He’s also a very nice guy, and he’s quite constructive in his attitude toward city affairs.”

But the Aerie is a controversial project to Beek and others because they believe it makes too big an alteration in the face of a coastal bluff.

“I just object to his defacing the cliff,” Beek said. “It’s obvious there are four houses there northwest of him that have come too far down the cliff, and they shouldn’t have been approved.”

Surprisingly, Selich — who used to live in Cameo Shores near the 30,000-square-foot Portabello estate — said there was no uproar over that project, despite its size.

Jeannette’s interest in efficient buildings leads many to ask, isn’t an enormous luxury estate like the Portabello — with its bowling alley and a movie theater — the kind of conspicuous consumption that flies in the face of green and sustainable building?

Good question, Jeannette said, but he saw the project as a testing ground, an example for what can be done on smaller projects.

“Making a building like the Portabello green is not an easy thing to do,” he said. “It’s an opportunity to develop the technology and test it to the point where now it makes sense, let’s use it.”

Besides, he added, “It’s better to experiment on someone who can afford it than someone who can’t.”