Rustic Canyon is a very special, extremely localised part of Los Angeles which is
defined by one of the few naturally flowing creeks in Los Angeles which is Rustic Creek.
As a result of that and its proximity to the Pacific Ocean,
it creates its own microclimate which allows for more lush vegetation,
a few different kinds of species of trees than you see in other parts of LA.
This home was designed for a small family, a young couple that had two
young daughters at the time and they basically gave us a lot of latitude.
Essentially they wanted a modern, Hacienda style home but beyond
that we were free to basically create a new experience for them.
A Hacienda home is a more traditional house that was common probably about 100 years ago.
It's more based upon a Spanish or a Mexican style home.
When they came to us and asked us to do a modern Hacienda,
I felt it was energizing because it was a bit of a challenge to say how are we going
to take a classic typology and adapt it to the modern needs and modern technologies.
The floor plan is essentially four wings, it's divided into a primary suite wing,
a wing with two girls bedrooms in it, a wing for a guest room and theatre and a wing with service
and garage in the middle connecting all the wings is a single living room and kitchen space,
all connected with essentially what is a light box and that allows for really
focused and unusual experiences of changing light throughout the day,
there's never a moment in which the house is not illuminated in some sort of magical way.
We study light very carefully and in this case since we had a core
space at the centre of the home, we set up large expanses of glass on the Northeast,
South and West exposures of this primary central space. This allowed light to track
from morning to evening in different ways and illuminate different sections of the rooms.
We wanted to create a sense of volume in the kitchen because I really feel like the kitchen is
oftentimes the heart of the home it's where people are entertaining and families are gathering.
We really wanted to see a kitchen cathedral, where the kitchen could basically become the
altar where families come together to worship around food and cooking.
We intentionally made the space of the kitchen, the highest ceiling space in the house.
I think allowing a really large window to be the defining moment of that cooking space and having
it frame a really beautiful view of these large Melaleuca trees is a spot of potential magic
The master skylight was something that the clients approached mid construction,
saying that they would like the room to have a little bit more visual drama.
Being the builder and the architect at the same time, we're able to be a little bit more nimble and
on our feet when we're building a house and make changes in ways that are pretty fluid.
There's this absolutely enormous beautiful oak tree in the back that we wanted to basically
capture from below, so we designed the skylight to open up to that tree so when you walk into the
room you can look up and see the oak flanked by the oak wood flooring that we put on the ceiling.
The palette is essentially a minimalist palette, given that we were riffing on the Hacienda style
architecture, we began with a very basic stucco palette on the exterior of the house.
In the interior we used white oak floors both in the ceilings and in the floors,
for the doors and windows we essentially used a combination of black aluminium frames.
There's a few things I'm most proud of when I think about this project,
one is we were able to act as designer and general contractor and really
pull off you know, in some ways what I would consider a complete work of art.
Typically when I design a house, much of the design work that we do is really from perspective.
Essentially you walk through the house and understand visual lines of sight, where the best frame views
are, and really just think about it from almost a cinematic or a storytelling point of view.
It's important not to think of this house or most of the homes that we do as these
immaculate museum-like pieces, I mean homes should weather and evolve and take on wear and tear.
It's always fun to come back to a house and see how an owner has
been living in it and sometimes it's quite a surprise to see how
they've been doing it, and it other times it works exactly as expected.