Our Logo: Why Idealists Build the Best Homes

You can’t drive a mile in Los Angeles without seeing a new developer house going up. They’re gilded with fancy finishes, boasting their status as a luxury product. However, more often than not, all the exquisite ingredients fall flat; the final result is joyless, disconnected, and out of context with its surroundings. Something just doesn’t feel right in spite of everything poured into the space. The builders followed trends, they followed the market fluctuations, but since their motivation was not pure they will likely follow them out as well.

We’ve all been in a home home that that is effortlessly elegant, tasteful and in harmony with its surroundings. No individual ingredient makes it special, rather it is the thoughtful combination of all the elements that produces something wonderful and timeless. These homes cannot be crafted by simply following a plan, it takes a craftsman who understands the spirit of a unique vision to create something special. These are the homes that will stand the test of time, and what we at Alisal Builders strive to build. Italian architect Andrea Palladio’s 16th century masterpiece, the Villa Rotunda, is a living example of this type of home. It contains a perfect union of idealism in design and intuition in execution that cannot be replicated. This is exactly what we strive for as custom builders and is why we chose its original schematic sketch as our logo.

Palladio designed the Villa Rotunda in 16th century Italy near Venice, then the commercial capital of Europe. Ostentatious expressions of power were the architectural norm for the wealthy families of the day. Palladio wanted to create a different sort of space, one that incorporated Humanist ideals of balance and harmony with nature while still considering function and how the space would be used. Every detail was considered to achieve this end; the rooms are oriented so that they could each capture sunlight at any time of day, the loggias on each side offered sweeping views of hillsides, meadows, and Venezia in the distance, and the four facades allow the house to always be viewed from a favorable angle no matter where you viewed it from.

Palladio spelled out his principles of strict symmetry and proportions in in his book the Quattro Libri dell'Architettura. However, as copy-cats would later discover, when building the Rotunda, Palladio deviated from his plans in subtle ways; proportions found in the actual home were different than in his ideal drawings. As architectural researcher Dr. Tomás García-Salgado put it, “It seems that Palladio wanted us to learn the ideals from his treatise and the reality from his works, leaving our imagination to bridge the gap between his theory and practice.”

This is exactly where the art of building occurs. Successfully bridging that gap between theory and reality is what what separates an artisan apart from someone mindlessly following a plan. We look to Palladio’s sketches to serve as a reminder that every one of our homes starts with a vision, and our task is to intuitively understand the spirit of that vision. Only then can we create something special that will stand the test of time. We hope that as our city continues changing, our homes will stand for generations, monuments to this ideal.

Written by Nick Aulet-Leon