Seven Years, One Hammer: Dean Levin Rebuilds a Laurel Canyon Cube

Dean Levin bought a 1,500-square-foot, 1950s house in Laurel Canyon in 2019 and started demolishing it himself the day escrow closed. "I had a hammer in my hand and I started the demo work full cowboy style," he says.

Levin is an LA native with architecture in his blood. He studied at Pratt in New York, built a career as an artist, then founded his multidisciplinary design firm, 22RE, in 2021. His teenage education came from the city itself. "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," he says.

The house, technically, was the problem. "It didn't really have a style except for it was basically a cube," Levin says. The layout was "weird". Everything felt dark and "very subterranean." So he changed everything.

How do you fix a dark cube?

Light came first. Levin installed large picture windows and opened up the staircase, wrapping it in a custom millwork motif inspired by Alvar Aalto. He had just returned from Japan, and he wanted the house to feel faintly like a ryokan:

• Ceilings demoed to expose the original beams
• Exterior redwood cladding stained black, a nod to shou sugi ban, the Japanese wood-burning technique
• A galley kitchen built into the former laundry room, clad in white oak cabinetry with minimal adornment

"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.

What fills the rooms?

Vintage European modernism, mostly — pieces by French, Danish, and Italian designers. The dining room's Bruno Munari pendant anchors the whole concept. "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."

Everything else, Levin designed himself: a wall-to-wall couch with conversation-pit energy, a wooden bed with an attached bench, a floating console that hides the TV. He also built every piece of furniture in the children's room.

The children arrived after the plan did. What started as a home for a young couple now houses Levin's three-year-old son and infant daughter. The open staircase, an obvious parental alarm, doesn't worry him. "Kids are adaptive," he says. "My son's grown with it."

Rafael de Cárdenas, Levin's former boss and a designer and creative director, puts the work in perspective: "[Dean's] projects exude confidence, even swagger, but in a gentle way. The design is rigorous, the execution precise, yet there's an underlying sensuality to it all."

Why seven years?

Levin didn't consider the house finished until he'd spent seven years on it. That pace is his philosophy, not an apology. "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." The house, in other words, started his firm — "The house started it all" — and it still sets the terms: slow, layered, unfinished on purpose.

By Amara Osei