What started as an early 20th Century design by the Swiss born architect and designer Le Corbusier, has become as an award winning building in West Hollywood.

The building at 1200 Sweetzer Ave. features 10 two-story townhouses, stacked on top of each other, in a four-story building. (photo by Matt Wilhalme)

On June 10, the Westside Urban Forum will honor the Los Angeles-based firm of Aleks Istanbullu Architects with a citation at the 2011 Westside Prize ceremony at Casa del Mar in Santa Monica.

The award-winning project located at 1200 Sweetzer Ave., features 10 two-story townhouses, stacked on top of each other, in a four-story building. The $10 million project took more than three years to complete after developer Nick Hertz hired Istanbullu.

“It’s just not something that has been done before,” Istanbullu said of his design for the residences that offer three, and in some, four sources of light. Istanbullu spoke of the rare times when great buildings can be constructed, and said the project would not have been possible without the guidance of West Hollywood’s urban designer John Chase, who passed away last August at the age of 57.

“When [Chase] felt like a project really had merit, and wasn’t just fancy, he would champion it and stand in front of the council and just say ‘no, this is a great building, you are just not seeing it’,” Istanbullu said. Chase will be receiving a posthumous award at the event.

More than 30 years ago, Istanbullu came to L.A. he said, to find his own voice. The draw was the architectural openness of the city.

Born in Istanbul, Turkey, he was educated in Switzerland, attended college at the Illinois Institute of Technology and was recruited by the Chicago-based architectural and engineering firm of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill LLP (SOM).

“It would have been easy to stay in Chicago,” he said. “I knew exactly where I would be in forty and fifty years.”

But after a decade at SOM, and a move to L.A., Istanbullu started his own company 25 years ago.

In December of 2005, Hertz purchased the property at 1200 Sweetzer Ave. and began interviewing potential firms to work from the ground up on the construction. Hertz considered almost 20 applicants before he met Istanbullu.

Hertz was looking for someone who had worked in West Hollywood before, who had a contemporary flare, but more importantly would be someone with who he could get along.

Istanbullu fit the profile and presented the developer with a design that broke away from the typical “railroad car-style” housing prevalent in the area with a stacked model blueprint, in a form he had previously constructed in Japan – which had received an award.

Breaking the location’s design into three distinct buildings, Istanbullu was able to create the sense of individual homes on the property, and was able to use natural light in each building. But after finishing construction on the project, Istanbullu didn’t just walk away; he left his fingerprints on everything inside of the homes, from color choices to countertops.

“He’s involved in all those processes,” Hertz said. “It’s nice to work with someone who is not only savvy architecturally, but also with the interior.”

Istanbullu currently has two other projects of the same style in the works in West Hollywood.  The townhouses that have been sold have ranged in price from $520,00 to $1.1 million.