Architects
XTEN Architecture
Location
Hollywood Hills, Los Angeles, CA, United States
Architects
XTEN Architecture
Principals
Monika Haefelfinger & Austin Kelly, AIA
Client
Randolph Duke
Contractor
Peddicord Construction
Area
418.0 sqm
Project Year
2007

From the architect. 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 a garden terrace for the second level. Steel beams set into the retaining walls perpendicular to the hillside are cantilevered off structural shear walls at the front of the site.

Lateral steel clear spans fifty feet between these beams creating a double cantilever at the leading edge of the house and allowing for uninterrupted views over Los Angeles. Front, side and rear elevations of the house slide open to erase all boundaries between indoors and out and connect the spaces to gardens on both levels.

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 or to slide beyond the building perimeter. Deep overhangs serve as solar protection for the double pane glazing and become progressively larger as the main elevation of the building follows the hillside contours from Eastern to Southwestern exposure. This creates a microclimate which surrounds the building, creating inhabitable outdoor spaces while reducing cooling loads within. Every elevation of the house opens to capture the prevailing breezes to passively ventilate and cool the house. A vestibule at the lowest point of the house can be opened in conjunction with glass panels on the second floor to create a thermal chimney, distributing cool air throughout while extracting hot air.

The fireplace is made of dry stacked granite, which continues as a vertical structural element from the living room floor through the second story. The main stair is charcoal concrete cantilevered from a structural steel tube. Service and secondary spaces are clad in floor to ceiling rift oak panels with flush concealed doors. Several interior walls are dark stucco, an exterior material that wraps into the house.
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 spaces from interior to exterior.
Set in a visible hillside area above the city, the residence appears as a strong sculptural form developed at the scale of the large site. The logic of the architecture is developed directly from these site conditions: the building follows the site contours, the interior spaces extend to embrace nature and nature extends into and throughout the house.

For Enquiries for business

Please contact Monika at:
mhaefelfinger@xtenarchitecture.com
T 310 773 4188

Business Details

XTEN – Los Angeles
10315 Jefferson Blvd

Culver City, CA 90232

T 310 773 4188
F 310 287 2002
info@xtenarchitecture.com

XTEN – Sissach
Haupstrasse, 60
Sissach – BL 4450
Switzerland
T (41) 061 975 9090
F (41) 061 975 9099

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