Canyon House Addition

Oblique tilting volumes add function and dynamism to a mid-century residence in Bel Air Hills

The project is 1,200 sf. addition to an existing mid-century ranch house located in the Roscomare Rd. canyons of Bel Air Hills, where instead of lush artifice and mega mansions, there exist a few, discrete and withdrawn mid-century houses, often easy to miss, still standing. The existing residence, a one-level two-bedroom and two-bath house, sits on an infilled, long and narrow parcel flanked at its back by a very steep hillside overgrown with tall pine trees. With little room for expansion due to front and rear setbacks, our proposal expands the height with a modular addition that transforms its image as well as its relationship with the surrounding landscape.

The addition adds three bedrooms including a master bedroom on a second level, creating a larger two-car garage and a storage at ground level. Linking the new and existing house, the vertical double height volume of the stair connects and unifies the entire house. In order to comply with hillside ordinance, the project uses infill to create a new datum, concealing the garage while expressing only the upper volumes and still allowing for a generous deck to extend at the back of the house.

Formally and spatially, the new addition produces an interplay of three objects: the horizontal volume of the existing house, a new tilted mass of the bedrooms and a minaret-like volume containing the stair, which connects them together despite their physical separation. Cladded with black tinted metal shingles, the new house insinuates an unseen image of artificiality for a domestic environment in stark contrast with the wild and foggy eccentricity of the canyons.