Uniquely beautiful by any measure, perhaps the most captivating quality of this award-winning 7,239-square-foot, three-level custom-designed Seal Beach residence is how it unites the ancient and the new in a technologically advanced beachfront home dedicated to comfortable family living, fine arts, and the rejuvenation of body and spirit.

The soft-contemporary home features Fossil-flecked seagrass limestone floors, granite and marble in a range of delicious hues, stainless steel, copper, teak, and mahogany in the exterior and interior construction are complemented by sculptures and artifacts from Asia.

For all its artistic balance, the home -- first place winner in Residential Design & Build Magazine?s 2009 prestigious Design Excellence Award for homes over 7,000 sq. ft. ? is equally attentive to every physical comfort, with a special focus on fitness and social activities.

Its main level is dedicated to an extraordinarily scenic living and dining area, a fabulously attractive and functional kitchen, and an office/library designed for focus and productivity. The upper level is devoted to bedrooms, and the lower level to recreation, casual entertainment, fitness, and therapeutic wellness.

The dining and living rooms and the master suite face the sea and Santa Catalina Island; mitered windows create open vistas from the Seal Beach pier to the Long Beach city skyline. There are full kitchens on both the main and lower levels; five bedrooms including an expansive master suite with many luxuries; seven bathrooms; two laundry rooms; a billiard room; and a plush state-of-the-art projection home theater with a 92-inch screen and fully reclining seats. A wrap-around staircase and elevator access the primary living areas of the home?s three levels, plus its rooftop sundeck.

A fully equipped, temple-like exercise room has an adjacent dry cedar sauna and a steam sauna. A nearby massage room is equipped with a warmer for towels and rocks. The home?s library-office has his-and-her built-in desks, a fireplace, a 500-plus-bottle wine cellar, and an adjoining Zen meditation garden.

The surfside ocean-view courtyard is a large alfresco extension of the lower level, with a completely appointed outdoor kitchen with granite counters, a heated swim-in-place lap pool and heated spa, an outdoor shower, and a custom stainless steel firebowl. Skillfully hand-laid mosaics of koi fish and sea turtles make the pool and spa works of art in themselves.

Advanced technologies increase the convenience of home?s comforts as well as its security and environmental friendliness. Crestron and Lutron ?smart house? stations located throughout let residents control everything from music, lighting, and temperature to views from night-vision-equipped security cameras. All of the home?s major control points have locking gates augmented by a biometric system using a stored database of fingerprints; a simple swipe of the finger by anyone in the database gets access to the house.

A 52-panel solar system on the roof contributes significantly to the home?s electrical needs. Heating is provided by a 10-zone radiant water-heated system in the floors; cooling is provided by six air conditioners. Earth-friendly artificial grass enhances the paved driveway in front of the three-car garage, which has custom aluminum and frosted glass doors that give the home an enchanting gem-like glow when backlit in the evenings.