Tour Professional Skater Lizzie Armanto’s Mid-Century Los Angeles Home

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A swimming pool wasn’t on skilled skater Lizzie Armanto’s must-have record when she was scouring Zillow again in 2021. But that was earlier than she got here throughout a mid-century residence in Los Angeles’s Highland Park neighborhood and realized that the yard’s kidney-shaped fixture was designed by Blue Haven, a maker of iconically skateable swimming pools. She willingly out-bid the 28 different gives on the property to make it hers. The pool itself was in poor situation, so there was no query it’d must be reconstructed. After it had been drained and earlier than a crew arrived, Armanto invited just a few of her closest associates over to check it out. “It was such a surreal thing to have a session at my house,” she shares.

Technically, she will be able to take her board inside, too. While working together with her inside designer, Hannah Go of Studio Hanego, Armanto selected Richlite, the gold commonplace for skate ramp surfaces, as her flooring. To most individuals, the large-scale tiles may appear like a model of laminate, so it’s simply a type of IYKYK particulars. “When other skateboarders come over, they trip out when they see it,” Armanto says.   

It was only one method the pair thought exterior of the field in the course of the design course of. Throughout, Armanto typically channeled her love of Finnish design nice Alvar Aalto, whose Villa Mairea home has a equally formed free-form pool. The coloration blocked kitchen cupboards have been largely impressed by Aalto’s Paimio Sanatorium in Finland, the place hues have been deliberately chosen to assuage tuberculosis sufferers. Last 12 months, she even collaborated with Artek to create limited-edition stools that includes items from her previous skate decks on the seat within the form of iconic locations to take a dip.  

Go put a 2025 spin on issues by making the kitchen’s eating nook tremendous purposeful: the aspect bench options storage beneath the cushions (the right hiding place for an Instant Pot) and detaches so you possibly can shift it to the opposite aspect of the desk or out of the way in which utterly. And whereas the cupboard fronts have been all made by an area carpenter, the framing is IKEA. (Her floating lavatory self-importance can also be two mixed IKEA self-importance cupboards customized clad in white oak). 

Sometimes within the mornings after associates have spent the night time, Armanto will discover somebody sitting on the counter searching onto the yard by way of the pass-through window. (If you’re catching on, she doesn’t have many strict home guidelines). “When you’re a little kid, your parents tell you not to get on the counter. But once you’re an adult, you can really do whatever you want. It’s amazing,” she says with amusing. 

Hanging on the wall between the kitchen and lounge is a quilted piece by artist Ben Venom that Armanto commissioned after her shut good friend and mentor Jeff Grosso handed away. The Mothra illustration is a nod to his Godzilla-inspired nickname. “When I started, there weren’t many women making a career of skateboarding,” says Armanto. “I’m really grateful he was there for me in a time when people like me didn’t have a voice in this industry.” 

Other nods to associates will be present in the lounge. A rice paper lamp shade by Jeff Cheung, the creator of Unity (a printing press and skateboard model that helps queer individuals, trans individuals, and other people of coloration) hangs over a Floyd swivel chair. Lance Mountain, a “legend in skateboarding and someone I’ve always looked up to,” says Armanto, made the miniature duplicate of a well-known skate pool that’s encased within the espresso desk. 

Then after all, there’s the visitor lavatory, which is one large ode to her actual BFF, her canine Alma. The bubblegum pink and pistachio palette comes instantly from her pup’s favourite caterpillar toy. “It just makes my home feel so much more cozy knowing that’s Alma’s bathroom,” says Armanto. “People get a kick out of it. She’s such a princess.” In an effort to keep up a few of the residence’s character, Go saved the pink sink and built-in cupboards and hunted down a bath and mosaic tile that appear like they could possibly be authentic to the home. 

The designer particularly added built-ins to the entryway to carry her shopper’s large sneaker assortment. “This girl has shoes!” says the designer. But there’s nonetheless loads of further storage within the main bed room, the place tall cupboards act as a divider. If Armanto’s mattress body on the opposite aspect of the wall appears acquainted, that’s as a result of it’s a riff on the cardboard beds she slept on whereas staying within the athlete’s village in the course of the Tokyo Olympics. “I loved the ingenuity of it,” she says. 

As renovations have been happening, Armanto hunkered down in equally small quarters. The pool house-slash-office within the again served as her outpost for a part of the 12 months, although you’ll by no means hear her complain about being near the backyard. In addition to having design chops, she’s additionally obtained a inexperienced thumb, recalling the time she planted a sunflower seed in her dad or mum’s yard as a child that grew two tales tall. Her L.A. yard, which got here to life with the assistance of native panorama agency Dune Gardens, needed to be hand-watered for the primary two years. Now, it’s acclimated and thriving by itself. Armanto can relate. 

“This house was a gift to myself. I’ve never lived in a place this nice,” she shares. “It’s really easy to deny yourself something you want just because it’s scary or unknown but at some point, you just have to go for it.”