house stepping down a hill
Los Angeles, CA
Photography by Bruce Damonte
Black and White images by Bestor Architecture
This hillside house began with the owner acquiring Raphael Soriano’s 1,500sf Lipetz House (1936) and an adjacent empty lot. A natural promontory provided the opportunity to build a larger primary residence. The distinctive ‘streamline moderne’ boat shape of the Lipetz showcases the music room, featuring a grand piano for the original client and a 180 degree view to the reservoir below and the mountains beyond. Our new project sits below the Lipetz House and is shaped both by the desire to dip below the view horizon of the original house and also by need of creating a legible shape along the hillside. While Soriano’s house uses a prow-like form with continuous windows, our new building takes the shape of the hillside stepping down and extrudes it to give a repetitive peak and slope form to the roof volume.
The architecture of the hillside house is in dialog with its early modernist neighbor while also completely contemporary. Three primary materials were used in the construction: board formed concrete, prefabricated trusses, and 80 millimeter PVC industrial roofing. Two large trusses form the living room pavilion, which is flanked by two private zones. This public pavilion is open to views towards the ocean as well as the reservoir and mountains. The ground floor spaces of a carport, pool and indoor/outdoor living are connected to the Lipetz house through a continuous landscape, creating a larger compound zone for entertaining and continuing that history of performance.
The materiality and construction techniques are industrial and minimal in nature. The trusses are customized to create multiple interior ceiling forms and were prefabricated off-site. The PVC roll roofing wraps the entire roof as well as its vertical surfaces, serve as a “cool roof” that reflects light and is a low-cost protective solution in a high fire zone. A pool is notched into the front courtyard and is a reflective surface that links the site to the reservoir visible below. As with Soriano’s house, continuous windows offer the hillside house expansive views to the water and mountains.
