Los Angeles, California, USA 

Category:Private Homes
Year: 2023
Architects: Standard Architecture
Design Team: Jeffrey Allsbrook, Silvia Kuhle, Anthony Chieh, Jihun Son, Lolade Frankel, and Nazifa Virani
Contractor: Valle/Reinis Builders, Inc.
Client: Noloko Trust
Photographers: Chris Mottalini

The project combines two terraced properties with a sloping landscape, connecting an existing home and a new one. The homes accommodate three generations of a blended family, and their open connections promote casual interaction. Previously separated by retaining walls, the fluid landscape is book-ended with new structures – a gable-roofed home on the upper terrace, and a large open pergola on the lower level. A small courtyard between the structures offers a direct connection.

The properties are situated on the floor of a canyon, and they include an expansive hillside covered with mature oak trees rising to the south. The narrow zone between the road and the bottom of the slope provides the only area suitable for building. Planning constraints stipulated that the buildings must be set back from the road and from the slope.

The project’s design included the new home on the upper terrace, remodeling the existing home and creating a large new pergola on the lower terrace, and the landscape connections between the structures.

Challenged to connect two properties separated by retaining walls and 3 meters in elevation, the designer took on the design of the landscape as an integral part of the project. The completed design fluidly connects existing and new homes, while creating a grand outdoor room framed by the structures and the steeply sloping hillside. The new home is designed to be independent from the existing one, and also to be intimately connected through carefully designed outdoor spaces. A small courtyard directly connects the lower levels, and the new landscape unifies the properties.

While the typical suburban home directs views toward the rear – to the backyard, this project’s design redirects views to the sides, parallel to the homes. By creating a linear landscape and placing the covered outdoor rooms at each end, spaces are visually connected and extended views are created, bringing the surrounding hillsides into the setting. The project creates a pastoral landscape for the new architecture by engaging the natural slope and screening the neighboring buildings. The new sloping meadow landscape is anchored at each end by the new structures, which offer destinations in the landscape.