unbuilt project

Our starting point for this project was an existing ubiquitous L-shaped suburban ranch house with one main difference. The home’s extraordinary location near the top of the Hollywood Hills made this ranch house quite different than all the others.

Renderings by blue point architecture

The building program called for an addition to the street side of the house, a modest reorganization of the existing home’s layout, a general redesign that capitalized on the sites amazing views, while also providing privacy from the street and neighbors.

After analyzing the existing house’s limited architectural elements, the roof held the most potential for formal investigation. The idea of the roof was abstracted and conceptualized as an independent continuous sheet of folding planes. The design for this roof would then be directed by the differing site conditions; folding down to provide privacy from a neighboring house that was very close, opening for an interior courtyard, and lifting up off an exterior wall to provide light while preserving privacy. The roof would become the home’s defining feature, integrating the new and old portions of the house, while providing a variety of diverse spatial experiences inside the home.