City / Tarzana, CA Program / 3,000 sq. ft. single family home Completed / 1992 Awards / 1993 AIA Award of Merit; 1994 Sunset Western Home Award; 1998 California AIA Award of Merit
This 3-bedroom house is located in the San Fernando Valley in a rustic subdivision with sprawling residential lots and big trees. The house design provided a medium for exploring the changes in landscape that characterize the region’s development. The dry motor and entry courts transmute through the house into shady, green, irrigated garden. The house is essentially transitional shelter rather than enclosure. In fact, the most roomlike place on the site is outdoors—the yellow—walled entry courtyard. We explored the inversion of inside and outside by appropriating a traditional inside space, the walled room, as an outside space.