Ruocco Revisited: Norm Applebaum AIA's own home is a mid-century masterpiece 
By Debra Lee Baldwin
This article originally appeared in San Diego Home/Garden magazine, and has been updated. It is used with permission of the author.

The notice ran under "Homes for Sale," but it seduced Norm Applebaum, AIA, more effectively than any Personals ad.

"I saw an ad for a Lloyd Ruocco home on Mt. Helix described as 'a symphony of glass and wood," Norm recalls. "I knew that was the house I was going to buy." Ruocco, who passed away in 1981, was San Diego's premier post-war-Modern architect.

But the "new" home was a 1,300-square-foot, two-bedroom house in crying need of TLC. Trees had buckled the concrete, and sliding glass walls wouldn't have lasted another year. Walls had been painted pink and green, and a wet bar upholstered in tufted leather. Norm shakes his head as he describes how a competing buyer wanted to cover the home's finest feature---floor-to-ceiling windows---with draperies, and to pave its smooth plaster walls with (shudder) wallpaper.

Norm, who matter-of-factly admits he "eats, breathes and sleeps architecture", has specialized, throughout his 32-year career, in custom homes. His residences combine elements reminiscent of Cliff May, father of the ranch style home, and Frank Lloyd Wright, whose buildings appear to soar, thanks to clever cantilevering. Norm recently finished a nine-year project---arguably the largest house ever built in San Diego---in Rancho Santa Fe.

But he doesn't equate quantity of space with quality of space. "If the function isn't met, it isn't architecture," Norm says.

Smart use of space is a Ruocco keynote. The architect, who came to San Diego in 1922, worked with architects Lillian Rice and Richard Requa before opening his own firm. Ruocco produced public buildings, including the Design Center on Fifth Avenue, and private residences---many of which have been lost. Typical of the Modernist style, Ruocco structures have a flat-roofed, rectilinear profile, and glass walls that virtually disappear.

Homes by the two architects---Applebaum and Ruocco---have in common an elegant simplicity. There's a sense of openness and lots of natural light. Ceilings, floors and cabinetry are wood; soffits conceal indirect lighting; and strip lights showcase niches. Exterior landscape, which blends with the interior via window-walls, lends a sense of spaciousness. Trees along the perimeter serve as light-dappled curtains. Interiors flow efficiently, and incorporate ingenious details---which, in his own home, Norm delights in showing visitors.

Norm's L-shaped house nestles into an southeast-facing hillside in La Mesa. The view, framed by lacy trees, is of layered hills. Main living spaces, though visible from outside, are private, thanks to thick greenery beyond a carpet-like lawn.

The front door, like the window-walls that flank it, has a panel of glass framed by wood. To the left as you enter is the living room; on the right, a dining room and kitchen. These rooms are open to each other (its an open-plan design), yet are separated by the four walls of a multi-functional cube---a 7-foot-square storage area that occupies the middle of the house.

One side of the cube faces the front door, and enhances the entry with niches for artwork. The cube's left (living room) wall incorporates a guest/coat closet. The right (kitchen) side holds china, plus a California pantry. Norm explains as he opens a cabinet door: "The shelves are slatted for air circulation."

Beneath a countertop that divides kitchen and dining room are drawers that open from either side---a handy idea that makes you wonder why it isn't done more often. Open a drawer from the dining room side, and you access cloth napkins; open the other end to retrieve cooking utensils.

A section of backsplash between kitchen countertop and cabinets slides open "for trash" Norm explains. Refuse falls into a receptacle accessed from the carport, outside. Norm had cabinets painted white, but salvaged rectangular birch drawer pulls designed by Ruocco. New black granite countertops reflect light.

Behind the central cube is a hallway that connects the home's two bedrooms, one of which Norm uses as a studio. Within the cube's back wall are storage and utility closets, and a forced-air unit; a powder room is opposite.

The house has central heating, but Norm prefers to use the fireplace, which sits in the wall that divides living room and master bedroom. Norm raises his hands above his head, palms facing backward. "In winter, when I'm in bed, I can touch the wall behind me, and it's warm," he says.

Don't all those windows turn into black mirrors at night? "I have garden lighting, so if I dim the interior lights, it's a similar feeling as day," he says. "But I like privacy at night, so I lower the Hunter Douglas Silhouettes." Sure enough, each large window has a discrete casing along its top; as he lowers a translucent white blind, Norm observes, "they look like Shoji screens."          

Norm's acute sense of aesthetics extends to furnishings and artwork, which, not surprisingly, are elegant and architectural. As he gestures to chairs and sculptures---many made of polished wood ("wood is my medium," he says)---he mentions their creators by name. Before long, the room seems filled with silent, highly talented people.

Of a geometric sugar pine sculpture, Norm says, "Ben Goo, a Cranbrook graduate, and former head of the sculpture department at Arizona State." Norm adds that he himself graduated from Arizona State University, and was "mentored by professor Calvin Straub, FAIA---a residential architect---as well as visionary Paolo Soleri."

Norm introduces a paper-wrapped floor lamp as "Noguchi," and glossy turned wood bowls as "San Diego master artists Min Koide and Gene Blickenstaff." A rocking chair and matching pair of rail-back chairs, custom-made, are "Nakashima---walnut sap wood."   

There's also a Nakashima music stand, made of maple burl with a whorled grain that resembles an alluvial plain. Norm plays trombone and classical guitar, and, to spark his creativity, listens to jazz, opera and symphony music. "There's a direct relation between music and architecture," he says. "Architecture is frozen music---I think von Schiller said that. Music is here and gone; architecture captures its essence as an art form."

He explains that George Nakashima, a mid-century Modernist furniture designer (now deceased), began his career as an architect, and then became a woodworker. Nakashima's daughter, Mira, still runs the family woodworking firm in New Hope,Pennsylvania---to which Norm has made pilgrimages.

There are a few sculptures by Norm himself, too---including a whimsical cast bronze nude chess set that dates to his university days. Its three-dimensional, stair-stepped board consists of alternating blocks of redwood and Douglas fir.

Homes that Norm lived in previously include one in Talmadge that looked so much like a Cliff May, May himself joked with Norm that he lived in one of his houses. Norm, who designs in three dimensions, making models of corrugated board, is working on an 850-square-foot studio to go behind his home.

Visible from the garden, just inside the house, is an abstract sculpture hewn from a section of tree trunk. "James Hubbell," Norm says. "I'd had my eye on it for 20 years. I bought it right before the wildfires destroyed Jim's studio. I feel I rescued it."

A large abstract painting on the dining room wall is "Ethyl Green," Norm continues. "I bought it at an auction at the Athenaeum, from the artist's private collection, because she was such a good friend of Ruocco's. It seemed appropriate."

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