The house and studio, located on a steeply sloped site in Santa Monica Canyon, has two faces: a studio workplace fronts the street, its roof following the slope of the road and its trio of doors opening onto an entry court screened from the street by a wall of landscape. The living areas, on the two floors below the studio, face the canyon and the back garden, 30 feet below the street. There are two zones of overlap; a study at the top of the tower at the level of the studio and a series of rooms under the driveway/entry court may be inhabited by either activity. Only the front door and stair of the living quarters reach to the level of the street.

Photos 1-4: Erhard Pfeiffer
Photo 5: Michael Weschler

The TR-1 House and Studio is conceived as a laboratory to test ideas about light, space, and material. The elements of the project divide into two typologies: habitable walls that define the site and volumes that define hierarchically important spaces positioned at places of special advantage. Two-story lichen-colored rough cement plaster walls, linked by concrete walls and stairs, define a walled courtyard. These walls establish a bounded space for family activities and an armature for the series of one-story smooth plaster and metal volumes. The interlocking volumes establish a dialogue between a collection of elements with distinct qualities: solid or void, light or heavy, open or closed, rooted to the ground or additive.

The house and studio are one room deep, and transparent and translucent glass allows sunlight into the interior from all sides. A skylight supported by exposed joists over the stair brings light into the center of the house. In contrast, concrete walls and natural concrete floors anchor the house and studio to the ground and provide a sense of ambiguity and extension between inside and outside.

Photos 1-3: Erhard Pfeiffer
Photo 4,5: Undine Prohl

A live/work house for an entrepreneur and an artist perches on a sloping two-acre site a few blocks from the ocean. The couple has an extensive art collection; the house extends the collection, while providing a container for it.

A concrete retaining wall incised into the site establishes the relationship between house and ground and forms a garage and level area for the automobile. Above this excavation hovers the essential house: a two level, four-square block on columns that is pulled forward over the excavated volume, so that the front wall of the garage bisects the square and creates an open portico for the car to slide under the house and out of view. This block contains the main elements of the house with minimal interior walls. It is wrapped in zinc panels on three sides and fronts the view with a glass face in a steel frame The glass facade is oriented to the southeast, facing Santa Monica Bay and an expansive garden, site of an ancient landslide. The rear of the living level meets the ground and glass doors open out to the back patio and herb garden, set into the cradle of the hill.

A series of ancillary rooms are contained in a linear volume that orients to views of canyon and mountains to the north. The middle level, a corrugated zinc volume, has two larger rooms, two baths and storage, intended for flexible use for den, studio, or a bedroom adjacent to the elevator and main living space. Its roof is a deck for the master bedroom. The corrugated volume cantilevers past the glass-walled rooms of lower level, with rooms for office, and guest.

TR+2 Studio House is organized around a trio of related yet distinct levels. The driveway ascends the sloping meadow of a one-acre site bordering Topanga State Park, passing through a grove of pomegranate trees, and arriving at the lower level, an auto/paddle tennis court. To the north, a covered outdoor space/carport wrapped by a scrim of curtains frames a view to the Santa Monica Mountains, and a steel and glass studio/guest house perches above it on four columns. A concrete stair and a ramp ascend to the house. Beyond the stair and wall a lower level concrete building covered by a sod roof and open to the north views, may be closed off from the upper levels to function as media/studio/family/guest space.

The middle level is defined by formal entry into the house and the primary indoor/outdoor living spaces of the project. Perpendicular to the path of entry, a raised lap/reflecting pool and a bridge connecting to the studio reinforce the layering of the approach.

Wrapped in translucent white polycarbonate and punctuated by steel window boxes, the upper level is supported by a grid of steel columns over the main living space, and is rotated to the ocean view. TR+2 Studio House is one with the site, in part sitting into the hill, in part suspended above it, offering the ambiguity of both pushing back the slope and being enclosed by it.