Vision
Life, site, atmosphere, priorities, and the architectural idea.
Architecture-led design-build
One vision.
Carried through.
Architecture-led design and construction for exceptional private residences, uniting creative direction, technical knowledge, interiors, craftsmanship, and field execution.
Professional credentialsCreative direction with accountable professional delivery.
Architecture + designApel Design, in association with Michael B. Maclaren, AIA.
Licensed residential constructionCreative New Dimensions Inc
CA General Building Contractor · Class B · CSLB #1056632, in conjunction with Apel Design for Design-Build
The private-client promise
Fewer handoffs. Clearer responsibility. A home protected from first idea through final detail.
High-value residential work asks the owner to make hundreds of connected decisions. When design and construction are divided into separate conversations, intent can weaken, information can fragment, and responsibility can become difficult to locate.
Apel Design’s approach keeps the senior creative and technical team engaged as the work moves from concept into documents, procurement, field decisions, interiors, and completion. The purpose is not simply convenience. It is continuity.
Senior-team attentionDiscreet client communicationOne coordinated directionAccountability through completion
Built evidence
The standard is visible in the finished work.
Architecture · Interiors · Building knowledge
The Aviator
A sculptural private residence shaped around structure, color, movement, landscape, and a highly specific Malibu setting.
Residence · Landscape · Crafted detail
Maliview
A hillside home composed through stone, plaster, courtyards, water, interior moments, and evening light.
Architecture · Interiors · Landscape
Mintcello
A Malibu estate in stone, plaster and hand-set tile, planned from the driveway and graded pads through to the last interior detail.
Architecture · Stone + plaster craft
The Blue
Hand-set stone veneer and sculptural plaster worked as one facade, with casework and interior detail formed on site rather than delivered.
Architecture · Sitework · Coastal construction · In construction
Surfside
A coastal residence taken from excavation and shoring through foundation walls and finished building, within sight of the water.
Architecture · Interiors · Design-Build
Oya
A stone and plaster hillside residence followed from steel frame to finished rooms: arched loggias, steel-framed openings, and white interiors turned to the coastal hills.
Architecture · Interiors · Coastal siting · In design
Azure Crest
A low, wide contemporary organized around a deep cantilevered roof plane and an uninterrupted ocean horizon.
Architecture · Interiors · Solar orientation · In design
Sensu
A dark timber and glass residence planned east to west so the house is worked by low sun at either end of the day.
Architecture · Colour + material · Landscape · In design
Malibu Rose
A residence where a single saturated plane runs through the building and out into the landscape, tying entry, terrace and pool into one move.
The integrated journey
A continuous line from intention to occupancy.
Each phase has its own decisions, documents, specialists, and risks. The advantage comes from carrying the same design intelligence and project memory across all seven.
Feasibility
Property conditions, program, regulations, consultants, budget, and path.
Architecture
Form, space, structure, openings, materials, systems, and details.
Interiors
Rooms, finishes, lighting, kitchens, baths, furniture, art, and objects.
Preconstruction
Scope, estimates, procurement, sequencing, coordination, and readiness.
Craft + Construction
Field leadership, trades, quality, decisions, and physical execution.
Completion
Commissioning, closeout, final detail, handover, and occupancy.
Residential capabilities
The home is one composition, not a list of disconnected trades.
Apel Design organizes the work around the completed residential experience. Individual specialist pages remain available for clients researching a particular need, while the design-build relationship keeps those needs connected.
Complete residences
Custom homes developed from site and program through architecture, interiors, outdoor living, construction, and handover.
Major transformations
Substantial renovations and additions that reconsider circulation, structure, light, facade, systems, interiors, and landscape as one new whole.
Interior architecture
Kitchens, bathrooms, rooms, millwork, lighting, finishes, art, furniture, and custom elements resolved at the scale of daily life.
Site + outdoor life
Pools, terraces, courtyards, landscape and hardscape coordination, walls, water, lighting, and arrival developed with the architecture.
Technical control
Preconstruction, consultant alignment, documents, permitting, estimates, long-lead decisions, and constructability studied before the field absorbs the cost.
Project leadership
Clear communication, schedule and budget visibility, procurement coordination, field review, quality control, and a disciplined path to closeout.
Making + craft
Knowing how a thing is made changes how it is drawn.
Material has weight, sequence, tolerance, lead time, cost, and a craftsperson who must turn an idea into something real. Field knowledge allows those facts to enter the design early, without surrendering the ambition of the work.
The result is a practice that can discuss a room, a concrete pour, a stone joint, a custom object, a landscape threshold, and the final experience of the home within one creative language.
Ground to finish
One team, from excavation to the last detail.
The sequence below runs from sitework through structure, finish and completion, drawn from Surfside, Mintcello, Oya, The Aviator and The Blue.
Process, not portfolio
On site
Doing the work.
Architecture-led building is not a diagram. It is the studio on the slab at layout, under the steel while it is set, and in the room when the detail gets decided. These are our own projects, photographed as they were built.
Confidence without noise
The luxury is not avoiding complexity. It is having it competently led.
Owners should not have to become the translator among drawings, consultants, trades, purchasing, approvals, budgets, and field conditions. Our role is to make those relationships legible and accountable.
Budget visibility
Scope, allowances, estimates, decisions, and changes tracked with enough clarity to act.
Schedule discipline
Approvals, design packages, procurement, field sequence, and dependencies organized around real milestones.
Procurement
Long-lead materials, fixtures, equipment, custom work, substitutions, delivery, and installation coordinated early.
Documentation
Design intent translated into coordinated drawings, selections, details, records, and field information.
Site supervision
Regular observation, trade coordination, quality review, issue resolution, and direct attention to what is actually being built.
Closeout
Completion lists, corrections, commissioning, documentation, handover, and the last details required before the work is truly finished.
Explore our capabilities
Enter through the need. Return to the whole.
Services
Everything the studio does, in one place.
Design, approvals, engineering and building. Most projects use several of these; a few use all of them.
Design
- Luxury HomesCustom residences from first idea through completion.
- Interior DesignInterior architecture, furniture, art and sculpture.
- Coastal + Hillside DesignBuilding where slope, soil and the coast set the terms.
- Kitchen DesignKitchens planned around how the room is actually used.
- Bathroom DesignStone, plaster and fixture detail resolved at plan stage.
- ArtAmit Apel's own practice in painting, sculpture and making.
- Custom FurniturePieces made for the room they sit in.
- SculptureSculptural work for interiors and grounds.
Planning + Approvals
- Land Use + SubdivisionsSite strategy before the building takes shape.
- Permits + EntitlementsPlanning approvals and building permits, start to finish.
- Development FeasibilityTesting what a site will actually support.
- Land Use StrategyZoning, overlays and the realistic approval path.
- Construction DocumentsDrawings coordinated for approval and construction.
Engineering + Systems
Building
- Design-BuildOne team from first drawing to final detail.
- Luxury Home Design-BuildArchitecture-led delivery for private residences.
- Custom Home ConstructionFraming, structure and finish on our own projects.
- PreconstructionDecisions made before the concrete.
- Construction ManagementCoordination on active sites.
- Renovations + RemodelsWorking within what already stands.
- Home AdditionsAdding without losing the logic of the house.
- Owner’s RepresentativeOne advocate for the whole project.
Multifamily + Commercial
- Multifamily ArchitectureHousing at scale, planned unit by unit.
- Mixed-Use ArchitectureResidential above active ground floors.
- Commercial ArchitectureBuildings organized around how a business runs.
- Affordable HousingDignity decided at the unit plan.
- Senior / Assisted Living + WellnessEnvironments for changing needs.
- Resorts + HotelsHospitality architecture and interiors.
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