Billowvista House

Ongoing
TYPE: Residential

CLIENT: Undisclosed
SIZE: 3574 sq ft
COLLABORATOR: Salt Landscape Architects, CW Howe Civil & Structural Engineering, REX Engineering, Wolcott Lighting Design

This new ground-up home on the bluffs of Playa del Rey will replace the family home of the owner’s grandparents. A modest corner property, narrow and with sloped access on both street sides, provided constraints against which the design pushed, pulled, and ultimately found articulation of the values and spirit of the new owners, taking advantage of the vistas and the neighborhoods' naturally cool microclimate.

The playful, dynamic composition expresses the vibrant personality and enthusiasm of the family for their community and the joy of habitation, sitting lightly on the bluff and embedding itself into the ground.

The current generation’s family of occupants are beloved local restaurant owners, and required an expanded kitchen, with a cellar for fermentation and a vegetable and herb garden. Food is the heart of the home, with kitchen and dining room given pride of place, and direct connectivity to courtyards for easy entertaining, including a direct flow between indoor and outdoor kitchens.

The family values nutritional health and wellness which led to the incorporation of unique features such as an onsen (Japanese style bath) and a personal gym.

The design ingeniously separates common areas for shared forms of living (food, library, and bathing) from more private, quiet sleeping zones. The pinwheel plan organizes these around a series of major and minor courtyards and balconies that allow for natural ventilation intake to every area of the home, and a vertical vent stack (doubling as a stairwell).

The sculptural approach, carved by the ocean breezes, also nods to the streamline moderne deco period found in the original planning of the neighborhood, transforming it into a complex composition that expresses the home's components volumetrically and compositionally, utilizing simple materials (stucco, aluminum windows, expressed concrete).

The underpinning approach is a single-room deep plan layout, guided by the goal of reducing reliance on artificial heating and cooling. A narrow floor plate increases natural daylight while cross ventilation reduces cooling loads and energy usage. The HVAC system itself is a series of dispersed heat pumps, allowing for the maximum efficiency and supported by onsite solar panels.

The thematic use of radiused corners throughout the home sculpturally expresses the home’s integration with and reliance on the flow of ocean breezes, the prevailing wind direction coming off of the bluff to the west. These curves welcome the wind into the home through the entry and side courtyards, through interior clerestory windows and the vertical stack (which doubles as the home’s main central stair).

In the garden, storm water is collected from higher roof surfaces and decks, then into the stormwater collection system where it is allowed to naturally percolate back into the ground.

The incorporation of a small residential elevator and a private guest suite on the ground floor means that the home will remain intergenerational for years to come.