When you ask Abeer Sweis what kind of space excites her, she would say one that influences people. Whether it’s a residential home or commercial space—wherever people spend time—she wants to bring out quality interactions in relationships that stimulate ideas, fuels communication, creates intimacy, and allows for growth. From family members chatting in the kitchen while preparing a risotto, to co-workers brainstorming a strategy to win new business, Abeer strives to create fertile built environments.
While her personal style is clean, contemporary and comfortable, she is at home working in every style, from traditional and Spanish to midcentury modern and contemporary. But through it all, one thing remains constant: when working on a renovation, she tries to sustainably safeguard a space’s original glory with a solution that honors its design while updating it to satisfy 21st century needs.
One project that stands out is the Frederick Monhoff renovation. This project was featured on the Dwell Magazine Home Tour and received the Santa Monica Conservancy Preservation Award for Renovation in 2015. Despite prior renovations, the home was too small for a family of four. An addition was necessary to give the family the space they needed to live and to entertain. Abeer’s vision was to respect Monhoff’s original design by making the addition look like it was always there.
Monhoff had incorporated non-parallel walls in his design. Abeer loved the challenge of working with all the different existing angles. She said, “It felt like a puzzle; taking all those crazy angles of the home and continuing them to create larger areas that are connected and still flow.” The back patio has become an extension of the living spaces; bifold doors at the patio join the living and dining areas with the den. The family also wanted a spa. Abeer did not want the spa to be set off from the house like a foreign object, so she designed it to become one with the house, allowing the water to fill in the crevasses and voids in the outline of the home.
In the future, Abeer sees SweisKloss creating even more architecture that blurs the lines between the inside and the outside; constructing spaces so that the natural and the human-made environment are joined seamlessly.
In our quest to live more naturally, to eat organically, to behave more sustainably, let’s make room for natural materials in our lives and space.
