In the Canyon Residence, the prominent stucco masses are custom colored and textured, both inside and out. The colors, woven into the fabric of the house's site plan, are derived from the hues found in the bark of the Sycamore trees on the property.
The L-shaped parti embraces the grandeur of its sloping site adjacent to a spring-fed creek.
The house mimics the site's slope and is never more than two stories at any location. The house strongly connects each indoor space to the verdant landscape beyond - replete with large native California sycamore trees around which the house has been designed. An amphitheater of stairs and floating decks facilitates this connection.
The entire volume of the stepped two-story structure is broken by elongated cubes of various heights that push and pull the plan parallel to the direction of the cubes' slide. The cubes are not simply visually strong: they become agents that break up the mass of the house as volumes start slipping with planes to the outside, pushing parts into and out of the yard.
The Canyon Residence is wood-framed construction with occasional beams and moment frames of steel.
Project
Canyon
Location
Los Angeles, CA
Year
1998
Status
Complete
Size
7,400 sf
Collaborators
CER Development, Inc. - General Contractor Griffith and Zarraga - Landscape Moshe Susser Air Conditioning - Mechanical Engineer Parker Resnick - Structural Creative Paint Techniques - Interior
Photographers
Tim Street-Porter
Thomas Loof
Awards
2000Los Angeles Business Council Architectural Awards
2002Chicago Athenaeum, American Architecture Award
