Los Angeles, California
This 2,400 square-foot house is located on a steeply sloped hillside property in the Glassell Park neighborhood of Los Angeles. The clients are a young couple: an artist and an arts administrator who needed a three-bedroom house with an open living area and a studio space.
Design concept and solution: One of several such projects by Escher GuneWardena Architecture, the design of the house addresses the familiar situation in Los Angeles of clients being compelled to develop difficult sites—steep uphill or downhill lots considered unsuitable for building by conventional standards—in order to build a new house within a modest budget. The proposed solution seeks a balance between economic concerns, engineering requirements, and creating an architectural experience particular to the site, a hillside covered with native shrubs, trees and grasses, with views of a nature reserve in one direction, and the city in the other.
Shaped by building department requirements for parking, turnaround space, and setbacks, a massive retaining wall burrows into the hillside and cradles the house on three sides. Three stepped terraces carved out of the slope create shelves for placing the rectangular tube volumes of the house itself with open ends facing either city or park views. The retaining walls become the demarcation between the man-made interventions and the surrounding landscape.
The lowest volume contains the studio; the middle volume accommodates bedrooms and a tunnel-like library space spanning the entire length of the building. The upper-most space is for living, dining, and kitchen areas. Plywood-clad boxes, which enclose stairs, baths, and utility rooms, float within the interior space of the tubes at each level, defining individual areas for different functions. All interior surfaces of the tubes are treated in smooth white finishes to emphasize the notion of weightlessness and to accentuate their directional relationship to the outdoors.
Standard Type-V wood construction methods and readily available building components are used throughout. The entire exterior of the building (roof, walls, and soffits) is “shrink-wrapped” in an inexpensive, energy efficient, thermoplastic roofing membrane. Its high solar reflectance and thermal emissivity decreases heat flow through the building while improving air quality.
People
Owner:
Completion Date Gross square footage: 2800 sq.ft. Total construction cost: $700,000
Architect
Personnel in architect's firm who should receive special credit:
Architect of record
Engineer(s)
Consultant(s)
General contractor
Renderer(s)
CAD system, project management, or other software used: |
Products
Structural system
Exterior cladding
Roofing
Windows
Glazing
Doors
Wood doors:
Sliding doors: custom made interior plywood sliding doors
Hardware
Cabinet hardware:
Interior finishes
Safari Solid Surfacing, Inc.
Paints and stains:
Paneling:
Special surfacing:
Floor and wall tile:
Furnishings
Lighting
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Controls:
Conveyance
Plumbing |
