Diamond House / XTEN Architecture

Feb 2010

Uploaded by David Basulto — Filed under: Houses ,Offices ,Selected , California, Fibercement, Santa Monica, USA, XTEN Architecture

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Project Name: Diamondhouse
Location: Santa Monica, California, USA
Architect: XTEN Architecture – Monika Haefelfinger & Austin Kelly (AIA, LEED AP)
Client: Aisha Ayers
Project Completion Date: Dec 2009
Project Size: 820sqf Interior, 500sqf Roof Deck, 1200sqf Exterior Terraces / Firepit Area
Landscaping/ Site Pieces: Mark Motonaga
Photographs: Art Gray Photography

The Diamondhouse is a sound studio and office extension to a house located deep in a canyon, against a severely sloping hillside, with minimal access and little space upon which to build. Direct sunlight reaches the site for only a few hours a day. The geotechnical condition is challenging, requiring 30-foot caissons to underpin new walls and foundations. A complex web of regulations governed the height, width, depth and specific relationship to the retaining walls needed to build the project.

Volume diagram © XTEN Architecture

Given these constraints, a multifaceted architectural strategy was developed for the small building. First, a base building geometry was developed to conform to the hillside and required codes while maximizing the interior spaces by extending them into adjacent sideyards. Like a rock placed in a small pond, the addition is carefully placed between the existing structure and an imposing hillside to inflect the landscape and create exterior programmatic spaces around it where none could exist before. The building geometry also conforms to the interior program as a corner of the upper floor flares out to accommodate a writing desk built into a north-facing window and a series of wall planes fold up and over the building to create a rooftop railing and enclosure.

Patterns © XTEN Architecture

Next, a building material system was developed to both relate the new extension to the natural landscape and to reduce the visual scale of the building. The façade pattern was created from natural elements taken from the canyon site; abstracted, scaled and arrayed across the building in 3d modeling programs. Many patterns, scales and patterns were investigated in this manner, from which several full size prototypes were made by laser cutting and cnc routing aluminum, zinc, steel, plywood and cement panel samples.

The 3/8” thick Swisspearl fiber cement panels shown on the final construction were selected for both the way they relate to the masonry site walls and original structure, and for the fragility they impart to the otherwise hard edged and programmatically driven geometry of the building. Daylight brings out the etched lines, irregular edges and delicate qualities of the cement panels, which in direct sunlight appear as thin as a ceramic vase. While in the evenings the panels become flattened and the overall volume emerges, appearing as a patterned and perforated lantern illuminating the canyon.

Detail © XTEN Architecture

: © XTEN Architecture

: © XTEN Architecture

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: © XTEN Architecture

: © XTEN Architecture

: © XTEN Architecture

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: © XTEN Architecture

: © XTEN Architecture

: Patterns © XTEN Architecture

: Volume diagram © XTEN Architecture

: Plans © XTEN Architecture

: Section © XTEN Architecture

: Detail © XTEN Architecture

About David Basulto: Graduate Architect. Co Founder and Executive Editor of ArchDaily.com. Architecture geek.

Cite:
Basulto , David . "Diamond House / XTEN Architecture" 01 Feb 2010. ArchDaily. Accessed 07 Feb 2012. <http://www.archdaily.com/48206>

Comments (14)
Tweets (9)
Links to this entry (1)

chenlu98 says:

The skin is much like art of paper cut.
It can not move me at all.

# February 1, 2010 at 06:34

stanley says:

Maybe 2 years ago, but now I really can’t be amazed by another skin. The shape is ok, nothing spectacular either. There is not strong idea, to make that kind of block.

# February 1, 2010 at 06:55

giglog says:

Look at the details (for example the edges). Absolutely inacceptable.

# February 1, 2010 at 07:32

Jeison says:

nah.

# February 1, 2010 at 07:36

mark says:

Question:

How is the waterproofing membrane protected from UV if the skin is perforated?

# February 1, 2010 at 08:35

LOME says:

Nice Pattern!But the building geometry is not “strong”! that’s my point. ^.^

# February 1, 2010 at 09:57

Adrian says:

Looks like louis vuitton’s House!

# February 1, 2010 at 15:09

cad says:

From all the extensive research all they got was a Louis Vuitton
pattern.

# February 1, 2010 at 15:32

derek says:

and not one picture that offers perspective on how this truly juxtaposes/ineteracts/plays against the original house. i think it speaks to the project’s lack of depth that we’re expected to find it’s skin and a simple distortion of the cube to be the whole trick.

# February 1, 2010 at 15:48

phishfood the architect says:

Glad to see the Louis vuitton comment posted.

its interesting that architecture was pushed away from the decorative skin and now we are returning to it. wrapping paper my be interesting but is it really architecture?

# February 1, 2010 at 19:18

jr says:

http://otropx.blogspot.com/2009/06/hablando-de-imitaciones-de-louis.html

# February 2, 2010 at 00:31

brandy says:

I happened upon this bldg at a holiday party and mostly disagree with the comments above. Nothing prepares you for the surprise of this structure tucked behind a traditional looking house in a woodsy canyon neighborhood. In person it feels like a piece of sculpture that’s been compressed between the house and some huge concrete hillside walls. It doesn’t appear ‘wrapped’ with wallpaper — it doesn’t feel 2 dimensional in any sense. As an artist I appreciate how the indeterminate edges play against the regular pattern geometry and how the thickness of the walls is shown at windows. It’s put together well. The differences between the inner and outer walls could have been exploited more — Henry Moore’s helmet series comes to mind –but the pattern as a scalar device works amazingly well in it’s setting.

# February 2, 2010 at 12:56

reger says: