A Los Angeles Home with the Hollywood Sign in Full View

Step into this house high on a hill in Silver Lake, Los Angeles, and the first thing that catches your eye is the view through the living room's picture window, stretching all the way to the Hollywood Sign. But once you catch your breath and turn your gaze indoors, it is the Togo sofa at the center of the living room that sets the mood.

The mustard corduroy Togo, arranged in an L shape, spreads wide before the fireplace and anchors the space. How this house has evolved, how the two of them work and think, how their tastes connect to their daily life — in the end, you come to understand it all through the sofa.

James is a film production designer — someone who explains characters through space. He has worked on major Hollywood productions including The Avengers and The Lion King, and has collaborated steadily with directors of exacting taste like Darren Aronofsky. His process is one of deep research and close observation, repeated again and again: what choices a person has made in life, why their space is cluttered the way it is, what furniture they would choose, even how they would move through their kitchen.

He finds location scouting — visiting real people's homes — especially fascinating. “I love going into someone's house and looking at the kitchen, seeing where they put their fruit. It makes me wonder why they put it there.” Such observation, he says, ultimately broadens his perspective, and he tries to keep an open mind.

Claire is a writer and artist who has expanded sensibilities drawn from food, everyday life, and nature into a wide range of work. She once created a cooking show and books for children — and the set was actually built in this house's garage. James designed it, a space where puppets and contraptions appeared together.

Recently, in the quiet left behind when her daughter departed for college, she found herself drawn back to the great horned owls that return to the Silver Lake Reservoir each year. Watching the owlets leave the nest, she thought she was looking for ways to help them — until, at some point, her perspective shifted. “I believed I was helping the owls. Then it suddenly dawned on me: I was the one being helped.”

Within nature's order, she came to understand the providence of a child leaving the nest and the heart of a parent learning to accept it. The experience will eventually become a book. Her work is closer to feeling than explanation, closer to sincerity than intention. “When kids respond right away, that means it's real. They know instantly when something isn't sincere.”

Their professions differ, but their attitudes toward work resemble each other: both are grounded in observation, and both unfold stories through space and the senses. That attitude carried over into how they furnished the house and chose their belongings. When they first moved in some twenty years ago, previous residents had gradually expanded the original structure. The view was good, but the layout was plain and short on character.

James recalled those days: “It was the neighborhood we wanted to live in, and with our daughter growing up, we needed a space for the family. I thought it had every chance of becoming a home that could grow with us. The house just felt too plain — it needed a focal point.” The renovation unfolded over many years, but it was the Togo that completed the house's atmosphere. First came a green Togo they fell for at first sight; after eighteen years of use, they replaced it with one in mustard corduroy fabric.

Contrary to appearances, the Togo is light. Its modules can be separated, carried into other rooms, then rejoined into a single mass. “I love that you can freely take it apart and bring it back together. It isn't stuck in a mold,” Claire said, and James added, “Furniture is usually stiff and formal, so your options are narrow. But this wasn't like that. It looked like a happy chair — playful, like something out of a fantasy.”

The corner piece connecting the two sofas was another element Claire adored. “When you sit in the corner, you just find yourself leaning back. Even now, when family or guests sit down, it creates an atmosphere where comfortable conversation flows naturally. It has a clear character, but it never overwhelms.”

James says choosing a sofa demands care. “Most of them are similar. But the Togo feels adventurous. You sense that someone made it with clear intent.” He added that the Togo is a piece you cannot easily change once you have chosen it. “You can't buy this and come back later asking to swap the fabric. Once you choose, you have to stay with it. That takes real conviction.”

That they chose the same model twice shows this family's time flowing along a single line. The change of fabric, though, reads like a small marker setting apart different scenes within that time.

Because James deals with space and scale all day, at home he prefers things simple and orderly. Yet that simplicity is less an emptied-out minimalism than a state of long observation, condensed. Claire, on the other hand, is mad for miniatures and collects them.

A miniature automaton she discovered in an old London shop is among her most cherished treasures. “It was a dusty little shop. Toys in the front room, and in the back room they showed me to, there were smaller, more special things. I nearly lost my mind when I saw it.” The intricacy of a small world completed by someone's hands thrills her. “If the house ever catches fire, this is what I'm grabbing on my way out (laughs).”

She once resolved to pare down her belongings, recalling Marie Kondo's advice, but it wasn't easy. “Everything I've brought into this house sparks joy for me. That's why decluttering doesn't really work (laughs).” This difference operates as balance within the home. Small objects abound, yet the space never feels cluttered. The Togo sits at its center — low and open, it seems a meeting point where two different sensibilities come together at the same height.

James and Claire are on the shy side, but they love having people over. For James, the storied objects around the house become devices for opening conversation. “Even without my explaining, the house speaks for me. It conveys a warm feeling without a word.”

Claire carries that conversation on through food. A Louisiana native, she often cooks dishes from home when they throw parties. “People here in LA go, ‘What is this?’” The unfamiliar flavors overlap with the space the couple has created, making moments that stay in memory. Asked how she chooses projects, Claire answered, “Excitement over money.” What matters more is whether she can imagine it — whether it moves her.

James said that film work, with its long timelines and extended stretches away from home, deeply affects family life. “That's why I only choose projects I can truly trust.” If advertising and fashion work serve to awaken and sustain his senses, film demands a far more concentrated energy. “Thousands of choices accumulate into two hours of running time. That accumulation is what creates the power to move an audience.”

The Togo resembles the way they live: distinct in form yet never exaggerated, slightly askew from the rules yet standing up to daily life. So it was with the Kermit-green sofa that endured eighteen years, and so it is with the mustard one we now sit facing each other on.

James said he admires designers like Jean Prouvé, who conceived buildings, furniture, and ways of living as a single structure; Claire loves “candy-like chairs that look like Muppets.” Their tastes differ, but they are alike in responding to the attitude a form carries.

In this house, the Togo is central but never excessive. Its enveloping form and low height draw people to sit, to lean back, to stay. Within it, layer upon layer, the folds of the Togo hold their observations, their playfulness, and the grain of the time they have passed through together. Perhaps the quickest way to understand this house is simply to sit down on the Togo.