By Dan Mazur

In an unassuming office nestled away in the Old Center, visions of strange and wondrous dwellings are taking shape. What’s more, these visions are becoming reality around the world.

Robert Mechielsen’s Studio - RMA provides integrated design concepts —architectural, engineering, interior and landscape— with a decidedly international flavor. Sustainable design and building solutions are a major ingredient of Mechielsen and his team’s work. The Dutch-born Mechielsen incorporates innovative technologies into an aesthetic that combines the classical and the modern.

Mechielsen’s approach to designing a space begins with function—the dynamic needs of the individuals who will be occupying it.

“First I want to study what is the purpose of the building—what do they want, what do they need and how do you connect that with the soil they’ve chosen to live on?

“Then you start knitting together a whole adventure for them—what are the views, what’s going to happen when you live in it?

“As human beings we’re always doing something—the human is always in motion. I try to design a shelter in such a way that whatever someone does they’ll get inspired—by a view, by the use of very beautiful geometries, or by getting a person very closely connected to nature.”

Mechielsen was born in Breda, Holland and studied architecture in Delft and Paris before coming to America in 1985. He tried New York and San Francisco, but didn’t find them aesthetically different enough from his native Europe.

“And then I saw Los Angeles,” he says. “I felt like it was a colony on the moon. It was so ugly and so wild. I loved it—especially 20 years ago. It felt like it was endless, huge.

“The expanse is what I like about it,” he continues about his adopted home state. “Coming from Holland, I think it’s the third or fourth densest populated country in the world. They have a good social way of living together, but they don’t have much room.”

Mechielsen still works in Europe. He’s currently working on design concepts for the renovation of the Amsterdam opera house.

He moved to Topanga 12 years ago, and opened his studio in the Center in 1995.

“Another thing I like about California is it’s very explorative in new ways of living—all the new-age thinking, which I think is very important. It’s all more or less generating from California and I think it’s going to have a large influence.”

Due to Mechielsen’s international background and his multi-lingual ability, the Studio has always attracted a vast number of international clients. Most of the work has been through referrals, with work expanding in Europe, the Pacific and currently in Brazil. Now Studio-RMA wants to make its resources available to the Topanga community.

Mechielsen has designed 15 buildings in Hawaii—homes, restaurants, even a drug rehab center. One of his current projects, on the big island, is an ideal showcase for his tastes and talents.

The Hi'ilani House is a family dwelling that Mechielsen has been hired to design by clients who are very interested in using and promoting sustainable building practices.

The 40-acre property is on the Hamakua Coast.

When Mechielsen visited the site, the location  suggested an approach  and design. The directions of the trade winds, the main sun exposure, the desired view—even the nearby volcanoes—were all at multiples of 60 degrees to the site. Mechielsen conceived a home based on interlocking hexagons.

Mechielsen and his clients turned to the master of modern architecture, Frank Lloyd Wright, whose Hanna House in Palo Alto is also based on the hexagon.

“I realized how spacious and luxurious a 120-degree angle is,” Mechielsen remembers—the hexagonal shape creates 120-degree interior ‘corners.’ “I needed to see that myself physically, because we’re all used to 90 degrees. It really gives you this feeling like you’re past boundaries—you’re flying with that angle. We’re still thinking in the square, but that feels so unrestricted and free.

“It was extremely helpful to see that,” he says of Wright’s creation. “He had to solve all kinds of things.”

The striking, 4,000-square-foot home is designed to be completely “off the grid”—ecologically self-sustaining. It’s completely solar powered, and there’s no access to water on the property so Mechielsen designed a series of catchment roofs to collect rainwater.

“Water cascades down from one roof to another, almost like leaves, into a huge tank where minerals are added to it,” he explains.

Mechielsen likes to think that designing a building is a little like designing a sailboat—a structure that interacts dynamically with the elements.

For ventilation, the roof acts as an aerodynamic foil for the Pacific trade winds to flow over. The resulting pocket of negative air pressure under the roof’s overhang pulls air through the house. The ventilation is regulated by opening and closing louvers, which are controlled by computer.

“The house is totally computerized,” Mechielsen says. “If you want hot water there are sensors in the kitchen. When someone walks in, that’s when the hot water is pumped to the kitchen. Same in the bathrooms, so there’s no waste of energy.

“So basically the land provides everything to live there. It’s also a farm. In Hawaii anything can grow, you can easily live off your land.”

“There’s a huge bathroom,” Mechielsen says.  “It looks out on the ocean, with a curved shower.”

Equally innovative is Mechielsen’s approach to building the house. For the walls he utilizes “skip-paneling,” a construction material he’s very enthusiastic about.

Skip panels are constructed of two concrete skins, stitched with rebar to a center layer made of foam or other material, thus “skipping” the middle. The panels Mechielsen uses for this house are four feet wide.

“It’s two skins tied together, like the skin of an eggshell, very thin, very strong,” says Mechielsen of skip panel technology. “It has a very high earthquake rating, a very high insulation factor, a very high fire rating and it’s extremely hurricane-resistant.

“Acoustically it’s very soundproof. You feel the mass of the concrete. It doesn’t sound hollow, like dry wall.”

The center of the panel can be made of recycled plastic bottles or other recycled materials, Mechielsen says.

The strong, thin paneling gives Mechielsen creative freedom.

“I love it because I can cantilever the roof out, create shade areas, really use the roofs to increase passive solar design. You get great sheltered outdoor living.

“But to use it economically, you have to reinvent what a house looks like. They don’t look like a typical house anymore.”

The Hi'ilani House will be pre-manufactured here in California, then shipped to the island to be assembled.

“I love that idea,” says Mechielsen of the pre-fab technique. “It’s very custom, very unique, but it has a great price control factor in it.

“The whole house—the interiors, the kitchen, everything—will be shipped in seven 20-foot containers.”

The construction of the Hi'ilani house will begin in March 2007. A balsa-wood model of the house will be on display at Studio-RMA’s booth at Topanga Earth Day, April 23 at Topanga State Park.

Mechielsen feels that his studio’s reputation is really beginning to take-off, and he’s clearly looking forward to the creative opportunities to come.

“My art is all about creating for other people. I love the act of creating. If I go into meetings with clients, it’s not like I have ‘my idea’—the ideas flow out one after another. Generally you throw out 80 percent of them, and keep the 20 percent that are really brilliant.”

Studio-RMA is currently developing an “Eco Library,” which will be open to the community in the near future. This library will provide information and samples on sustainable building materials, as well as the latest information on new developments in green building systems.

For more on Mechielsen and Studio-RMA, visit their website at www.studio-rma.com.

Model of the Hi`ilani House