Openhouse Project

The Californian based studio XTEN Architecture has designed the Openhouse project. This 4,500 square foot two story home was completed in 2009 and is located in Hollywood Hills. This area is “an affluent and exclusive neighbourhood of Los Angeles, California, USA".

“The Openhouse is embedded into a narrow and sharply sloping property in the Hollywood Hills, a challenging site that led to the creation of a house that is both integrated into the landscape and open to the city below. Retaining walls are configured to extend the first floor living level into the hillside and to create gardens on two levels. The front, side and rear elevations of the house slide open to erase all boundaries between indoors and out, connecting the spaces to gardens on both levels.”

Glass is used as the primary wall enclosure material for the Openhouse project. There are forty four sliding glass panels which are seven feet wide by ten feet high. These are “configured to disappear into hidden pockets and allow for uninterrupted views and access to exterior terraces and gardens. There are also fixed glass walls, mirror glass walls and light gray specular glass panels which lend lightness to the interior spaces”.

The glass walls are “visually counterweighted by sculptural, solid elements in the house rendered in stone, dark stained oak, tinted concrete and plaster”. Cut pebble flooring is used throughout the house, decks and terraces as a way of continuing the “indoor-outdoor materiality, which is amplified when the glass walls slide away.”

“The building finishes are few in number but applied in a multiplicity of ways throughout the project, furthering the experience of continuous open spaces from interior to exterior”.

Special thanks to HomeDSGN for the above images.