The Brains Behind Billionaire Homes

Building a home is surprisingly similar to designing a suit. With enough time and care, and money, an architect can tailor a house expertly to fit a client's lifestyle. According to some of the most prominent architects and designers, the craft of building a home for a billionaire comes down to listening, understanding how various elements compliment one another, and establishing a relationship with the client -- regardless of the high-priced demands.

"The great gift an architect can give a project, and the client, is the sense of tailoring, detail, an awareness of posture, the comforts of a fine lining, the relaxedness of the gentle drape, the ability to create seductive openings, the taut closing and elegance," says Diane Lewis, a New York-based architect and a professor at the Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture of The Cooper Union. "Architecture has a silhouette and a cut, too. The whole project from concept to construction is an exciting unveiling revelation."

Several architects around the country focus on this particular craft of making a couture home for the few clients who can afford it -- clients like the co-founder and CEO of the Oracle Corporation, Larry Ellison. To design his Japanese imperial palace of a home in Woodside, California, Ellison selected Paul Discoe, who is known for masterfully incorporating Buddhist ideology into practical design. For architects like Discoe, a strong design philosophy is the guiding force in the process of construction from the initial blueprint to the "Welcome Home" doormat stage.

The Philosophy of Design

Enlightened by Buddhism after spending five years in China, Discoe developed an affinity for Asian design that has been prevalent in his work ever since. He now considers Asian architecture, particularly Japanese and Chinese, to be his specialties.

"It is interesting to see how much design is bound by culture," he says. "Asian architects take Western approaches and aren't afraid to be fresh and far out with it, to be really daring. They don't have these pre-conceived notions of what a Western building should look like, they feel free to break from tradition. In the same way, Western architects play and experiment with Asian themes more freely."

For Discoe it can be as simple as mixing styles and historical periods, combining the design of a teahouse and a barn. It was this philosophy that caught Ellison's eye, as he also has an affinity for traditional Japanese architecture.

For James Cutler and his firm, Cutler Anderson Architects, nature plays a significant role in their design philosophy. "We try to understand the nature of all the components, the institution, the land, the weather, the flora, the fauna, the materials, so that we can work with them," he says. "When you work with nature, it takes on a will of its own, its own spirit. We want to release that spirit."

Cutler, who has been practicing for 30 years, is the architect behind Bill Gates's residence in Medina, Washington. He worked with Peter Bohlin to bring elements of nature into the Microsoft billionaire's home complex. In 2007, Bohlin's firm, Bohlin Cywinski Jackson, received the Design Award for Custom Housing from the AIA Housing Committee.

Whether building a home for the richest man in the world or just another billionaire on the list, Lewis says that money should never play a part in an architect's design philosophy. "In the tradition of the maker-architect, that is an architect who deals with poetics and can conceive the spatiality detail and texture of a structure, it isn't necessary to talk about 'expense,'" Lewis says. "Great architectural qualities aren't intrinsically expensive; the expense is in getting them implemented in the contemporary market-driven building industry.

Lewis infuses similar principles into her work with the future brains of the students at Cooper Union, where she is more mentor than instructor. "I must teach them to build the structure with the integrity, attention to fine detail, in a non-mercenary state of mind in order to arrive at a work of architecture; that is the expense: time, patience, and an elevated state of mind. That's why it is called expensive."