Hillside House

LOS ANGELES
2025

Sited at the base of a hillside, this extension to an existing English Cottage style guest house was designed for twin siblings and ascends with the natural topography. Its organizing principle is a rhythm of openings that sequences the relationship between the house and the mature trees that predate it.

In Los Angeles, history is at once real and fabricated. The project draws on Charles Jencks’ Daydream Houses of Los Angeles, a study of the eclectic and often contradictory styles that define the city’s domestic architecture. Rather than contrasting with the original house, the extension continues its idiom, an imported and largely invented past, while orienting itself toward the genuine remnants of the site’s history: the mature trees and the bridle path beyond. The design examines how such a vocabulary can be carried forward as a collage of stylistic elements, one that approaches pastiche while sustaining a coherent architectural identity.