TR_1  

 

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TR_1 StudioHouse

Pacific Palisades, CA

Architecture, Construction, Landscape

 2002 AIA|LA Design Merit Award

2001 Concrete House of the Year Cornerstone Award    TR-1 StudioHouse is conceived as a laboratory to test ideas about light, space, and material. The sloping site is located a few blocks from the ocean and has views of the coastline and Santa Monica Bay to the east and the Santa Monica Mountains to the north. The elements of the project divide into two typologies: habitable walls that define the site, and volumes that define hierarchically important spaces positioned at primary viewpoints.

Two-story lichen-colored plaster walls, linked by poured-in-place concrete walls and stairs, define a walled courtyard, forming an L that bounds the site on two sides and screens views of adjacent properties. These walls establish a bounded space for family activities and an armature for the series of one-story smooth plaster and metal volumes. The interlocking volumes establish a dialogue between a collection of elements with distinct qualities: solid or void, light or heavy, open or closed, rooted to the ground or additive. The kitchen and den occupy a void below a second story sheathed in corrugated copper. The copper-clad studio and zinc-clad master bedroom have large, sliding glass doors that orient to a view of the ocean. The living room has two views, one an internal view to the walled entry court, and the other extending across the swimming pool to the mountains beyond. The pool is absorbed into the organization of the house, consolidating the treatment of building and landscape. The angled cement-colored smooth plaster walls of the living room screen the interior of the room from the driveway and street.

The house and studio are one room deep allowing sunlight into the interior from all sides.  A skylight supported by exposed joists over the stair brings light into the center of the house. In contrast, concrete walls and natural concrete floors anchor the house and studio to the ground and provide a sense of ambiguity and extension between inside and outside.  The colors of the materials of the house are echoed in new and existing planting: red-barked eucalyptus trees, red fountain grass, chartreuse licorice plant and zebra grass, gray-barked sycamore and olive trees. The dining room and den are open in part to a lush back garden with papyrus and datura, blue fescue and oat grasses, and red and chartreuse kangaroo paws. On the deck above the living room, potted citrus trees provide fruit and fragrant blossoms, while the private roof deck above the master bedroom offers a panoramic view.