I can’t stand it,” says German-American designer Thomas Schoos, “when you go down a staircase and you have to switch on the lights. It feels really morbid.”

Schoos has spent his career chasing that sense of gloom away from his projects. Projects that have included Tao Nightclub in Las Vegas and the acclaimed Huntley Hotel in Santa Monica. Trophy homes for celebrities including Ellen DeGeneres and Will Smith.

It was this aversion to dark corridors that helped win him the commission for a Beverly Hills mansion now asking $34.8 million.

The owner wanted to replace the home he had occupied since 2002 with one that made full use of the half-acre site and its uninterrupted views. When the horizon runs from the towers of Downtown Los Angeles to the Pacific coastline, the ambition seems justified. It might’ve helped that Schoos had collaborated on the house it would soon replace.

Of the designs presented, Schoos’s was the only one to answer the sloping site with an architectural party trick. First raise a 30-foot-by-30-foot terrace on columns above the hillside to let daylight stream into the lower level through the open sides. Take it a step further. Add walkable glass panels within a steel grid above the........

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