| The project, completed in 2017, is an extensive house renovation in Altadena for a contemporary art gallerist and her biologist scientist husband. The program includes the renovation of three bedrooms, two new bathrooms and a powder room, a new kitchen, dining room and living room, and a new roof. It also included the remodel of the existing garage into a workshop for the husband. The site redesign included a series of outdoor decks, and new landscaping and hardscaping.
The existing house had been built in several phases (1920s, 1950s, and 1970s) and as such it was highly fragmented and compartmentalized. The house was also closed off from the garden. The design process involved clarifying and reconnecting the various portions of the house formally and programmatically. Due to zoning requirements, the exterior footprint of the house had to remain essentially the same except for modifications to the roofs and the addition of decks and trellises.
The goals for the new design were to unify the spaces, rearrange the circulation, open up the house to views, bring in more natural light, and create wall space for the owners’ extensive art collection. To open up space, the interior ceilings of the house were removed, bringing in light from linear inverted dormers, which also exposed the wood ceiling structure. A new entrance and circulation spine was introduced in order to link together the two main volumes of the house. New large glass exterior mounted sliding door openings were added to connect the spaces to the adjoining decks and garden areas. The living/dining room volume, the oldest and nicest part of the house, was cleaned up and a new precast concrete fireplace was added. A new open kitchen and dining area was designed as a central gathering space with views to the living area and outdoors. In order to accentuate the reading of the house as two volumes held together under one unifying roof, the space, in-between the two volumes, was celebrated at the connection point by wedge-shaped space for a sculpture and a vertical interstitial window. On the exterior, a new steel trellis and new stucco cladding were added to further unify the volumes of the house. Exterior doors were added at the main living spaces, circulation spine, and bedrooms to connect all spaces directly to the outside. The owners are avid gardeners and the gardens included native plant areas, raised vegetable beds, an even a large area for composting. The private spaces such as the bedrooms were designed to open out to the private gardens, while the public spaces opened up to a central garden space. At the entry, new precast planters are used to separate private and public garden areas.
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