When speaking “residence” with author and director Mara Brock Akil, you’re not essentially going to debate paint swatches, sconces, and sq. footage. I imply, it’s best to. Apart from being the inventive powerhouse behind such TV reveals as Girlfriends and Being Mary Jane, the screenwriter and producer seems to even be a design maven who has masterfully renovated the Los Angeles residence she shares along with her husband, Black Lightning director Salim Akil, and their sons, Yasin and Nasir. It’s awash in beautiful unique detailing, classic Murano chandeliers, and a strong assortment of labor by Black artists, together with Lorna Simpson and Noah Davis.
The household’s yellow Labrador, Dizzy, lies on the tiled ground within the entry, the place a Nineteen Sixties Venini chandelier from MA+39 hangs above. Art work by Noah Davis.
However for Brock Akil, design is about extra than simply the small print: It’s concerning the type of lifelong longings that pull at your heartstrings and immediate you to mood-board because you have been a teen. “We actually are our coronary heart’s wishes,” she says. “And I need my residence to mirror that.”
“We actually are our coronary heart’s wishes. I need my residence to mirror that.” —Mara Brock Akil
Brock Akil’s profession—she helms her personal busy L.A. manufacturing studio and has a Netflix growth deal—is in overdrive. However in recent times, she realized she craved a sanctuary as a supply of inspiration and restoration. That want turned much more rapid within the aftermath of the 2016 killings of Philando Castile and Alton Sterling, two unarmed Black males gunned down by police that summer season inside weeks of one another. A typically optimistic individual, Brock Akil discovered herself paralyzed with worry in a rustic that was continually undermining and devaluing Black life. “Pleasure is deserved,” she says. “We don’t should hold ready for it. And that’s what this home is.”
Take a Tour of Mara Brock Akil’s L.A. Dream House
She had at all times cherished Hancock Park, a historic enclave within the Wilshire part of L.A. A Zillow itemizing for a late-Twenties Italian Renaissance Revival–fashion home stopped her in her tracks. The ten,400-square-foot home had superbly preserved architectural particulars and such facilities as a health club, pool, and film room. Nonetheless, she questioned: “Can we dwell in it? Can we get to that ‘dream state’?”
Within the eating room, the classic rectangular convention desk is roofed in parchment. Classic Dan Johnson chairs and Murano chandelier, Pegaso Gallery Design; art work by Elon Brasil.
She enlisted designer Tiffany Howell of the L.A. agency Night time Palm Studio and defined her aim of making a house that mirrored her circle of relatives’s story whereas sustaining the home’s historical past. It was their third venture collectively—the 2 first linked after Brock Akil noticed Howell’s work on actress Laura Harrier’s residence in Silver Lake. She employed Howell to design the inventive suite at her manufacturing places of work and was impressed when it was accomplished in simply three months.
Within the kitchen, the customized cabinetry and islands are by Arclinea, and the partitions are clad in Arabescato marble. The home equipment are by Miele; the Salt-N-Pepa art work is by Janette Beckman.
Identical to Brock Akil, the designer believes {that a} house is first outlined by a “feeling.” A former music video director, Howell begins with a soundtrack for every consumer; Brock Akil’s was heavy on Sade, John Coltrane, Solange, Phyllis Hyman, Prince, and Anita Baker. That is adopted by a examine of favourite scents, locations to journey, and different design preferences. “I do a deep dive,” says Howell. With Brock Akil, she found the author’s love of ’70s Italian and French interiors, accented by a little bit little bit of “funk and grit.”
A former music video director, designer Tiffany Howell begins with a soundtrack for every consumer.
In Hancock Park, the vibe is instantly evident within the entryway, which boasts a sweeping staircase, archways, and a skylight encased in a ceiling painted a silvery blue. Harking back to Morocco, the place the Akils honeymooned, it feels much less like a lobby and extra like a courtyard. Howell furnished it sparingly with a black-olive tree in a terra-cotta pot and a Nineteen Sixties Murano chandelier cascading from the excessive ceiling overhead. Equally dramatic is the household’s eating room, the place the paneled partitions are painted in Farrow & Ball’s Skimming Stone, a creamy coloration Howell describes as “candlelight,” making a mushy glow round a classic rectangular desk clad in parchment.
Howell was tasked with honoring every member of the family’s distinctive persona and style whereas making a bridge with the house’s general fashion. Salim obtained a book-filled examine with a low-slung brown-velvet couch good for studying. In their very own lounge, the boys sprawl out throughout classic leather-based Togo sofas that Howell sourced from a vendor in Prague. And naturally, Brock Akil enjoys a number of rooms of her personal. One, aptly named the Rosé Room, is painted a mushy blush. That is the place Brock Akil entertains mates just like the legendary mannequin and activist Bethann Hardison, who lately stopped by to admire its Vladimir Kagan couch and poolside view.
Howell took old-world European libraries as inspiration for Salim’s blue examine. Sculpture by Kehinde Wiley (high middle); art work by Peter Beard (high proper); pitcher by Kara Walker.
Upstairs, the first bed room has a customized floating mattress clad in blue velvet; artworks by Kara Walker dangle overhead. And throughout the corridor is Brock Akil’s dressing room, the place her well-edited wardrobe hangs on customized powder-coated rods, her footwear completely lined up under. The partitions are coated in a Scalamandré wallpaper, and a sitting space has a curvy classic couch and Italian mohair lounge chair salvaged from a Barneys New York division retailer.
The boutiquelike house can also be a ravishing homage to the purchasing journeys she took as a toddler along with her grandmother, mom, and aunt to Saks Fifth Avenue. As Black girls searching for St. John knits in Nineteen Seventies and ’80s Los Angeles, she was at all times conscious of the racial barrier—and the way her circle of relatives insisted on taking over house. And now in her own residence in Hancock Park, she continues the custom.
Styled by Bebe Howorth
This story initially appeared within the September 2022 problem of ELLE DECOR. SUBSCRIBE