For $40 million, Danish Design is redefining the gentle hills of Los Angeles

Way back in history, around 1955-1970, the scattered tribes of Scandinavia jostled to take the lead in mid-century design. From Finland, Eero Saarinen made New Yorkers swoon with his flowing curves at Idlewild airport. But in the long run the Danes won.

Arne Jacobsen was chief architect, while Verner Panton and Børge Mogensen led a long line of interior and furniture designers who claimed posterity by bringing comfort and style to the backs of the world. We all enjoyed a Danish seat.

So here we are today, halfway up a soft green rolling hill in west Los Angeles. All that confusion of dried up bushes and lazy green pines. Then suddenly we find ourselves pinned to that old mid-century Scandi manual, with simple vertical lines and clean horizontal lines. Because this astonishingly beautiful, monumental, exciting piece of domestic architecture was designed by a Danish hand.

Thomas Juul-Hansen, born in Copenhagen, graduated from Miami. Took over the American songbook from being built in the ’90s and today runs a studio out of Manhattan. And with all the integrity of his Danish ancestors, he brings resolute discipline to the artifice of luxury.

To be found the house at 684 Firth Avenueyou drive up one of those steep, narrow cul-de-sacs with overhanging trees that wind lazily into the hills above the city. No through traffic. But there’s nothing relaxed about what stands out. Behind a patinated granite-paved entrance forum is a huge rectangle of blond travertine stone with a wide rectangular cut, behind which is a glass wall of about six meters square. And that’s just the side wall. You feel that you are not walking into a house, but into a public art gallery of the highest order. This is a building with a sculpted shape.

Juul-Hansen himself worked directly on the design of the new Getty Center, which opened nearby in Brentwood in 1997. Twenty-seven years later, for the property he designed on Firth Avenue and boldly named Getty House, he chose to source the same travertine from the same quarry in Italy that supplied the stone for the Getty.

What distinguishes a speculative project like 684 Firth from conventional new construction projects designed to suit the client is that the purity of an architect’s design ambition is given free rein. And so the stone was cut from the same quarry of the Lippiello family in Bagno di Tivoli, 20 kilometers east of Rome. Not only that, Signore Lippiello was pleased to continue the tradition and agreed to resume the cutting from the same spot in the mountains where they finished cutting for the Getty.

The side entrance, with motorized sliding glass doors 6 meters high, leads you into spaces of enchanting scale. But to appreciate this building in all its fullness, you must first walk around to the main facade. It seems to extend forever, another exercise in strict geometry. The slide rule produces a massive elongated mailbox in the same blonde stone. And behind it again the invitation of a huge glass panel facade that protects on one side a double-height space for reception and entertaining and on the other side the functional workhouse, where the large open kitchen begins.

The predominance of glass surfaces as an architectural element is purely mid-century, when it allowed for flexible indoor and outdoor living. Here, the immense size of these motorized panels seems to make a bolder statement about the overwhelming power of transparency – the grandeur, and not the grandeur, of the status and privilege it confers on anyone who comes into possession of this architectural masterpiece.

The nearly two-acre private hilltop property continues this sense of exclusivity. From the enormous roof terrace to the wraparound balcony corridors, across the vast distance beyond the infinity pool (cleverly shaped in a sinewy curve that contrasts with the rectangularity of the facade) it feels less like you’re looking out over LA than the city spreading out before you.

Inside, the owner’s choice of furniture resumes the story of Danish taste. Confident, low-profile seating allows the ceiling height to rise. To add another dimension, it is entirely anchored in Feng Shui principles by Feng Shui master Jonathan Ng, director of the International Feng Shui Guild, based in LA via Hong Kong.

The interior scheme modulates between monolithic walls of titanium travertine stone and vertical panels of white oak slatted wood, stained in a warm walnut – a natural palette that unifies the entire place, from the large living areas to the intimate rooms for sleep and well-being – trademark of a richly comforting Scandinavian lifestyle. For a buyer who is in love with the style, the style can be made available as is. Don’t ask Is hygge included? Of course it is.

James Harris And Drew Fenton by Carolwood Estates hold the entry 684 Firth Ave. Carolwood Estates is a member of Forbes Global Propertiesthe invited network of top real estate agents worldwide and the exclusive real estate partner of Forbes.