XTEN Architecture - Openhouse in Los Angeles, California

Thursday, 09 July 2009 07:29

The Openhouse is embedded into a narrow and sharply sloping property in the Hollywood Hills, a challenging site that led to the creation of a house that is both integrated into the landscape and open to the city below.

Retaining walls are configured to extend the first floor living level into the hillside and to create gardens on two levels. The front, side and rear elevations of the house slide open to erase all boundaries between indoors and out, connecting the spaces to gardens on both levels.

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Glass, in various renditions, is the primary wall enclosure material. There are forty-four sliding glass panels, each seven feet wide by ten feet high and configured to disappear into hidden pockets and allow for uninterrupted views and access to exterior terraces and gardens.
XTEN_Openhouse_04 XTEN_Openhouse_05 XTEN_Openhouse_06 There are also fixed glass walls, mirror glass walls and light gray specular glass panels, which lend lightness to the interior spaces. The glass walls are visually counterweighted by sculptural, solid elements in the house rendered in stone, dark stained oak, tinted concrete and plaster.
XTEN_Openhouse_09 The use of cut pebble flooring throughout the house, decks and terraces continues the indoor-outdoor materiality, which is amplified when the glass walls slide away. The building finishes are few in number but applied in a multiplicity of ways throughout the project, furthering the experience of continuous open spaces from interior to exterior.
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XTEN_Openhouse_08 XTEN_Openhouse_08a Set in a visible hillside area above Sunset Boulevard, the Openhouse appears as a simple folded line with recessed glass planes, a strong sculptural form at the scale of the site. The minimalist logic of the architecture is transformed by direct and indirect connections to nature.
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With the glass walls completely open the house becomes a platform defined by an abstract roof plane, a palette of natural materials, hillside, gardens and the views.

The Openhouse was awarded the AIA Next/LA Design Award | 2007 and the Bienal Miami+Beach Architecture Award | 2007

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