The house of your dreams "should be like the party you never want to leave," advises architect Jeff Soler. He converted his own house, a cramped, dark, 1920s side-by-side duplex, into a spacious light-filled single-family home with a loftlike living/dining/kitchen area that feels "like the resort we're too busy to get away to." Influenced by Corbusier, Gio Ponti, and Alvaro Siza, Soler's Modernist approach is, in his own words, "fun as well as functional." Current projects are a beach house renovation "where the challenge is trying to work with several social spaces despite some extreme zoning constraints" and a modern, 6,500 square-foot house on the Westside that incorporates a "textured, eclectic approach" to surfaces that include stacked stone, anthracite zinc panels, concrete, and bamboo.