A No-Style Home Is Transformed Into an Ode to LA’s Iconic Architecture and Design

Dean Levin is an LA boy through and through. Raised on the Westside with a fashion designer mother, he spent his youth exploring the city’s skateboarding and music scenes. He fell for the city’s architecture as a teenager, finding inspiration all around him: “Growing up in LA, you see so many different types of architecture…there’s very much the Neutra/Schindler concept of modernism and the international style, and John Lautner, Ray Kappe…that was very much my image of design and architecture.”

Since founding his multidisciplinary design firm, 22RE, in 2021, Levin has drawn enthusiasm for his sensual, modernist approach to retail and residential interiors. “[Dean’s] projects exude confidence, even swagger, but in a gentle way,” says Levin’s former boss, the designer and creative director Rafael de Cárdenas. “The design is rigorous, the execution precise, yet there’s an underlying sensuality to it all.”

Levin’s path to LA-inflected interior design involved a stop in New York City, where he studied architecture at Pratt before cultivating a successful career as an artist. He was still pursuing art in 2019 when he returned to the West Coast and bought a 1,500-square-foot home in Laurel Canyon that he planned to renovate himself. The house shifted Levin’s focus. “The house started it all,” he says. The day escrow closed, Levin went to the home to start work straight away: “I had a hammer in my hand and I started the demo work full cowboy style.” Technically, the 1950s-era structure leaned modernist, but, says Levin, “It didn’t really have a style except for it was basically a cube.” The layout was “weird” and everything was dark, “very subterranean,” Levin says.

The first order of business was letting in light, so Levin installed large picture windows and opened up the staircase, creating a custom millwork motif inspired by Alvar Aalto. Levin had just returned from a trip to Japan, and he wanted to infuse subtle ryokan-like influences throughout the house: Ceilings were demoed to expose the original beams and the exterior redwood cladding was treated with a black stain as a nod to shou sugi ban, a Japanese wood-burning technique.

He installed a galley kitchen in the former laundry room, opting for a uniformity through minimal adornment and the use of white oak cabinetry and cladding. “I really love a full wood [look], where it kind of looks like you had a wood block and you carved the kitchen out,” Levin says.

Many of the furnishings lean into European modernism, with pieces by iconic French, Danish, and Italian designers. The Bruno Munari pendant in the dining room defines Levin’s concept for the house. “I love the layering of [the light],” Levin says, “and that’s kind of what I was trying to do with this house: giving you blocks, but where you can see through them. There’s a lot of layering and texture instead of flat Cubism.”

What isn’t vintage is mostly custom designed by Levin—a wall-to-wall couch with conversation pit vibes, a wooden bed with an attached bench, a thoughtful floating console that hides a TV.

What started out as a home for a young couple evolved into a space that could accommodate children—Levin’s three-year-old son and infant daughter. About that open staircase? “Kids are adaptive,” Levin says. “My son’s grown with it.” Levin flexed his furniture design skills in the kids’ room as well, crafting all of the furniture himself.

Levin took his time with the home, not feeling like it was fully done until spending seven years on the project. It’s an approach he extends to his practice: “I always tell all my clients that I’m gonna get you 80 percent there,” he says. “The 20 percent is going to happen over the next 10 years.”