Open Form Architecture Blog

Main entry from Wood­lawn Avenue

Du­ring the 2005 AIA Ve­nice Home Tour, I got the chance to vi­sit the So­lar Um­bre­lla House. I was in­te­res­ted by the way the archi­tect and ow­ner, Law­rence Scarpa, in­te­gra­ted a new ad­di­tion to an exis­ting 1920’s one story bun­ga­low. Soon af­ter, I con­tac­ted him to dis­cuss on the image, iden­tity and in­te­gra­tion of his house.

Here is my in­ter­view with Law­rence Scarpa of Pugh + Scarpa Archi­tec­ture
Pic­tu­res by Mar­vin Rand

[Ma­xime Mo­reau]
Your work ex­plo­res the no­tion of den­si­fi­ca­tion, the idea of fi­lling the avai­la­ble ur­ban space in the city. Your house is an unu­sual struc­ture that ex­plains this idea well; the So­lar Um­bre­lla House is an ad­di­tion to an exis­ting sin­gle story — 650 square foot — bun­ga­low in Ve­nice. So, how has the ur­ban and archi­tec­tu­ral con­text of Los An­ge­les in­fluen­ced or sha­ped the iden­tity, image and in­te­gra­tion of your house?

[Law­rence Scarpa]
I would think the first most stri­king thing that in­fluen­ces my work is the fact that I grew up on the East Coast and in par­ti­cu­lar in Flo­rida. A lot of peo­ple claim how nice the weather is there which it is in many res­pects. But, the hu­mi­dity ma­kes it nearly im­pos­si­ble to live out­doors. When I came to Ca­li­for­nia and Los An­ge­les I was struck by its un­be­lie­va­ble cli­mate. For me, it was the ul­ti­mate cli­mate for li­ving ou­tside. At the same time it is a pa­ra­dox. To­day, in Los An­ge­les, the cost of li­ving is so high that there is very little and li­mi­ted space to ac­tually take ad­van­tage of the ou­tside as ho­meow­ner. So, this si­tua­tion al­ways has been an im­por­tant idea and rea­lity in my work; how archi­tec­ture coe­xists in such a great cli­mate when there is al­most no land to live ou­tside. So, I al­ways think about this con­text and how to ex­pand space with li­mi­ted re­sour­ces. I just think that is what I would con­si­der lo­gi­cal. The land price is high and this means that hou­ses are get­ting sma­ller and sma­ller. One way to ac­tually make them lar­ger is ex­pand them on the pe­ri­me­ter and above a building.

[MM]
What about the lo­cal con­text? The so­lar Um­bre­lla House is lo­ca­ted on a long th­rough lot (41’ wide x 100’ long) and seems to take ad­van­tage of this si­tua­tion. At the same time, it seems to es­ta­blish a new or­der in the neigh­borhood. The ad­di­tion is very dif­fe­rent form all the other hou­ses in the area, which al­ready have a va­riety of sty­les. So, is it pos­si­ble to think that the lo­cal con­text of Ve­nice is an im­por­tant fac­tor that kind of sett­les the or­der, hie­rarchy, and the re­la­tionship of the new design?

[LS]
The nice thing about Los An­ge­les is un­like a lot of ci­ties that has an ec­lec­tic mix of dwe­llings and where neigh­borhoods are com­po­sed of an in­di­vi­dual “sort” of home. The tract hou­ses are a great exam­ple of this si­tua­tion. In ge­ne­ral, these hou­ses are de­ve­lo­ped by a sin­gle de­ve­lo­per and as a re­sult, they al­ways look the same ex­cept for their colors.

Hou­sing pro­ject in Palm­dale, California

Ho­we­ver, Ve­nice is a par­ti­cu­lar neigh­borhood. It has what I would con­si­der a nice va­riety of ho­mes in style and scale.

From there, I did not see a need to re­pli­cate any par­ti­cu­lar style. Ins­tead, I was more in­te­res­ted in ma­king this house as light as pos­si­ble. Trans­pa­rency th­rough the house allows views to pe­ne­trate from front to back. On the site, the house has a cer­tain light­ness. It ap­pears to sit lightly upon the land even if it is al­most 30’ tall.

So­lar Um­bre­lla House, Fa­cade from Wood­lawn Avenue

Also, like you ob­ser­ved, this pro­ject is lo­ca­ted on a block, which is do­mi­na­ted by th­rough lots with pu­blic streets on two si­des of the pro­perty. Most hou­ses on the block treat Boc­cac­cio Ave­nue as the front of the house and treat Wood­lawn Ave­nue much like an alley de­trac­ting from the neigh­bo­ring ho­mes ac­ross the street. From there, we flip­ped the house from its ori­gi­nal orien­ta­tion. What was for­merly the front and main entry at the north be­co­mes the back. Thus, the new de­sign reor­ga­ni­zes the re­si­dence to­wards the south. This move allows us to create new li­ving spa­ces and a gra­cious in­tro­duc­tion to the re­si­dence. Mo­reo­ver, we shift the re­si­dence 180 de­gree so that we can take ad­van­tage of the indoor-outdoor li­ving and reo­rien­ted the house to bet­ter so­lar conditions.

So­lar Um­bre­lla House, Fa­cade from Boc­cac­cio Avenue

[MM]
How have these mo­ves af­fec­ted the struc­ture of the new house?

[LS]
Due to the small site there were li­mi­ted op­tions for the buil­ding pla­ce­ment. The­re­fore, our analy­sis fo­cu­sed on the pla­ce­ment of buil­ding com­po­nents in or­der to take ad­van­tage of abun­dant na­tu­ral ven­ti­la­tion, light and to con­trol heat gain and heat loss. Ins­tead of tea­ring down the exis­ting struc­ture built in 1923, we kept most of its square foo­tage. But at the same time, we re­mo­de­led the exis­ting house the way like most peo­ple do in this area when they add-on on an old bun­ga­low. The ad­di­tion and re­mo­de­ling of the exis­ting house crea­tes a mas­ter be­droom on the se­cond floor, li­ving spa­ces on the first floor and porches on both si­des of the lot ad­dres­sing both streets equally. The exis­ting house lo­ca­ted along Boc­cac­cio was re­tai­ned and re­mo­de­led while the ga­rage lo­ca­ted on Wood­lawn Ave­nue was de­mo­lished and re­pla­ced by a new entry and li­ving space. By doing so we also trans­for­med the pe­des­trian cha­rac­ter along Wood­lawn Ave­nue. Mo­reo­ver, even though the com­ple­ted struc­ture is th­ree ti­mes its ori­gi­nal size the net inc­rease in lot co­ve­rage is less than 400 square feet.

[MM]
Would you say that your idea to graph a new struc­ture over an exis­ting house gave you more op­por­tu­ni­ties to ex­press so­mething more con­tem­po­rary in the design?

[LS]
First, we are in­te­res­ted both in how the spa­tial flows and spa­tial ex­pe­rience work within a house. In this case, the spa­tial qua­lity is really what we fo­cu­sed on.

The re­si­dence res­ponds to what we ca­lled “glo­bal re­gio­na­lism” and it pic­ked up on the Ca­li­for­nia mo­dern aesthe­tic and fluid con­nec­tions bet­ween in­side and out – that crop­ped up around Los An­ge­les be­gin­ning in the 1920’s.

Also, we are in­te­res­ted in a new lan­guage th­rough the use of sus­tai­na­ble and re­gio­nal ma­te­rials mi­xed with glo­bal tech­no­lo­gies such as so­lar pa­nels for energy generation.

The So­lar Um­bre­lla House pro­vi­des a con­tem­po­rary rein­ven­tion of the so­lar ca­nopy. The so­lar pa­nels pro­tect the body of the buil­ding from ther­mal heat gain by sc­ree­ning large por­tions of the struc­ture from di­rect ex­po­sure to the in­tense southern Ca­li­for­nia sun. Rather than de­flec­ting sun­light, the so­lar skin ab­sorbs and trans­forms this rich re­source into usa­ble energy. Like many de­sign fea­tu­res, the so­lar ca­nopy is mul­ti­va­lent and rich with meaning—performing se­ve­ral ro­les for func­tio­nal, for­mal and ex­pe­rien­tial ef­fect. Green buil­dings nor­mally drum up a vi­sion of science fairs, but the So­lar Um­bre­lla de­fies such ste­reoty­pes, gi­ving sus­tai­na­ble li­ving a much-needed mo­dern point of view.

[MM]
What about the boun­da­ries bet­ween the spaces?

[LS]
There are no dis­tinct boun­da­ries within the en­tire house. The spa­ces flow one into another. We main­tain the pri­mary la­yout of the exis­ting re­si­dence, which was tightly pac­ked with pro­gram (kitchen, di­ning, li­ving, two be­drooms and a bath) and we joi­ned the ad­di­tion to the south, which inc­lu­des a new entry, li­ving area, mas­ter suite ac­com­mo­da­tions, and uti­lity room for laundry and storage.

The kitchen, which once for­med the back edge of the re­si­dence, opens into a large li­ving area, which in turn, opens out onto a spa­cious front yard.

View of the di­ning room and kitchen

We re­mo­ved the back wall at the south and re­pla­ced it by an ope­ra­ble wall of glass in the li­ving area. This glass wall de­li­ca­tely de­fi­nes the edge bet­ween in­te­rior and exterior.

Also, we crea­ted an un­bro­ken vi­sual co­rri­dor from one end of the pro­perty to the other. Ta­king cues from the Ca­li­for­nia mo­der­nist tra­di­tion, we con­ceive ex­te­rior spa­ces as out­door rooms. By crea­ting strong vi­sual and phy­si­cal links bet­ween ou­tside and in­side, these out­door rooms in­ter­lock with in­te­rior spa­ces, blu­rring the boun­dary and crea­ting a more dy­na­mic re­la­tionship bet­ween the two.

The re­la­tionship bet­ween the dif­fe­rent pro­grams is also blu­rred. Be­cause the su­rroun­ding neigh­borhood has a low den­sity of units/acre, and that most of the lots and hou­ses are very small com­pa­red to the na­tio­nal ave­rage, it was im­por­tant for us to ef­fi­ciently use the space in­side the house. For ins­tance, some of the fur­ni­ture is built-in, as is the large couch in the li­ving room. This piece allows sto­rage to be built into it and a por­tion of it can be used as a queen-sized bed for over­night guests.

Also, there are prac­ti­cally no doors in­side the house. Even the mas­ter be­droom on the se­cond floor is com­ple­tely open.

The mas­ter suite is lin­ked to the new li­ving area be­low by a perforated-steel stair so as the hot air ri­ses; it pas­ses th­rough it and out of the house. Mo­reo­ver, the rooms are kept cool with cross ventilation.

The mas­ter be­droom stra­te­gi­cally opens onto a deep co­ve­red pa­tio which over­looks the gar­den. This space evo­kes R.M. Schindler’s Kings Road Re­si­dence. The pa­tio ex­tends the be­droom area out­doors, crea­ting the sen­sa­tion of a slee­ping loft ex­po­sed to the ex­te­rior. This deep porch car­ves out an ex­te­rior space within the vi­sual bounds of the buil­ding en­ve­lope and pro­vi­des the front ele­va­tion with a dis­tinc­tive cha­rac­ter. This area of the se­cond floor is open and at the same time pro­tec­ted by pla­nes, which wrap around it.

So, the house is a dy­na­mic com­po­si­tion of in­ter­loc­king so­lids and voids. The vi­sual co­rri­dors, stairs, bea­ring walls, struc­tu­ral co­lumns, guar­drails, built-in fur­ni­ture and ca­bi­netry vary in den­sity, co­lor and tex­ture. Light pe­ne­tra­tes the in­te­rior of the re­si­dence at se­ve­ral lo­ca­tions. Also, a se­ries of step­ped roofs, gla­zed walls, and cle­res­tory win­dows broad­cast light from mul­ti­ple di­rec­tions. Light and sha­dow cons­tantly change the at­mosphere in­side the house. They be­come pal­pa­ble for­mal tools that en­li­ven the more per­ma­nent and fi­xed ele­ments of the de­sign. To­gether, all of these com­po­nents es­ta­blish an ef­fec­ti­vely la­ye­red com­po­si­tion rich in vi­sual and for­mal interest.

[MM]
How did you re­solve the con­fron­ta­tion bet­ween the pu­blic and pri­vate space?

[LS]
Well, it is not easy. I mean, I do not be­lieve in buil­ding ba­rriers, or that big walls should be built around ho­mes. Ins­tead, I think a house should be part of its en­vi­ron­ment, street or com­mu­nity. On the other hand, every dwe­lling needs to at­tain a cer­tain le­vel of pri­vacy. In this case, we did a few things to ac­com­plish that. First, we set down (about 16 inches) the li­ving space par­tially into the ground. Also, we do have a short fence around the pe­ri­me­ter of the pro­perty. So, by de­pres­sing the ground plane, the pe­riphe­ral walls be­come much ta­ller. Con­se­quently, within the house the oc­cu­pants gain privacy.

In ad­di­tion, since the mas­ter be­droom on the se­cond floor is com­ple­tely open to the ou­tside, we crea­ted on the south façade a se­ries of abs­tract fins which are made of steel and in­dus­trial brooms brist­les. The west façade is sc­ree­ned by so­lar pa­nels. So, the dis­play of the fins and so­lar pa­nels not only de­fi­nes the for­mal ex­pres­sion of the re­si­dence, but also fil­ters light, pro­vi­des pri­vacy and pro­tects the in­ner space from di­rect views without lo­sing this sense of openness.

[MM]
All your pro­jects seem to be in­fluen­ced by the idea of Na­ture, and by dif­fe­rent ways of in­te­gra­ting the na­ture into each space. So, would you say that the spa­ces you de­sig­ned take ad­van­tage of so­mething else to con­nect with the green space of the city?

[LS]
Yes. On the se­cond floor you can over­look and get a bet­ter view of the city. In fact you can see a lot of it. You can see the Santa Mo­nica Moun­tains, the marina’s to­wers, the ocean… So it is very im­pres­sive. At the same time, you can look down to the gar­den and the pool. So these ele­ments create an in­te­res­ting con­nec­tion bet­ween in­side and ou­tside. In some sense, both the in­ner spa­ces and te­rrace flow out be­yond the boun­da­ries of the site to con­nect with the lands­cape of the city.

[MM]
Com­pa­red to other firms in Los An­ge­les who de­sign sus­tai­na­ble archi­tec­ture, your pro­jects ex­ploit not only the po­ten­tial for per­for­mance but also the sen­si­bi­lity of those stra­te­gies and ma­te­rials in or­der to achieve a rich and in­te­res­ting aesthe­tic ex­pe­rience. So, how have the no­tions of sus­tai­na­bi­lity con­tri­bu­ted to trans­form the image and iden­tity of the So­lar Um­bre­lla House?

[LS]
First of all, I will ar­gue, that a buil­ding that is an energy hog, that ever­yone lo­ves, is more sus­tai­na­ble than a buil­ding that uses no energy that no­body likes.

To that ex­tent, sus­tai­na­bi­lity is­sues are more a lei­sure then archi­tec­ture. Further­more, per­for­mance is not a subs­ti­tute for good de­sign. It is un­for­tu­nate that in this so­ciety it is be­co­ming a tag line for many de­sig­ners to be a sus­tai­na­ble archi­tect. Sus­tai­na­bi­lity is not really a pa­ra­digm for archi­tec­ture. It is just a la­yer that should not be im­ple­men­ted in a dif­fe­rent way than ma­king a buil­ding han­di­cap ac­ces­si­ble. I mean, this is one of the fun­da­men­tal prin­ci­ples of archi­tec­ture: a buil­ding should work with its site and climate.

The So­lar Um­bre­lla is very site spe­ci­fic. Even if this re­si­dence has a lot of si­mi­la­ri­ties with other of our pro­jects, I think that one thing that holds to­gether is that we look deeply into re­gio­nal is­sues, like the cli­mate, as well as broa­der glo­bal is­sues. So, the two are really fu­sed to­gether to create the iden­tity of the house.

For exam­ple, the house is or­ga­ni­zed so that over 90% of the gla­zing is on the north and south fa­ca­des. The south and west fa­ca­des are sha­ded by a se­ries of lou­vers and so­lar pa­nels. To com­pen­sate for the tem­pe­ra­ture dif­fe­ren­tial bet­ween day and night we pre­ci­sely pla­ced conc­rete floor and some conc­rete walls as ther­mal heat sinks.

Uti­lity costs in the past have been re­la­ti­vely low in this country, but we con­ti­nue to see uti­lity pri­ces rise. In this con­text, the so­lar pa­nels will be­come even more im­por­tant. The So­lar Um­bre­lla show­ca­ses the so­lar pa­nels in a way that lets peo­ple see that they can be beau­ti­ful and serve a dual purpose.

The so­lar pa­nels are not con­sig­ned to a one-dimensional uti­li­ta­rian ap­pli­ca­tion, ins­tead they are in­te­gra­ted and form ca­no­pies that sha­des the buil­ding. Further­more, the so­lar pa­nels de­fine the en­ve­lope, pro­vide shel­ter and overhang on the south-facing areas in or­der to con­trol and re­gu­late sum­mer and win­ter heat gain and es­ta­blish a dis­tinc­tive archi­tec­tu­ral expression.

I be­lieve that a buil­ding should take some res­pon­si­bi­lity for the en­vi­ron­ment ho­we­ver; you can’t have a really sus­tai­na­ble buil­ding if it’s not good de­sign. Peo­ple won’t want to live in it. Play­ful ele­ments are as im­por­tant as avoi­ding waste and li­ving responsibly.

[MM]
Your of­fice is part of a small group of archi­tects that ex­pe­ri­ment with un­con­ven­tio­nal ma­te­rials. So can you ela­bo­rate on the in­te­rac­tion of the dif­fe­rent ma­te­rial and their ef­fect on the space and iden­tity of the house?

[LS]
One thing we try to do is so­mething that archi­tects do not ad­dress enough in buil­dings: the tac­tile qua­li­ties of archi­tec­ture: to make peo­ple want to touch them. This is an im­por­tant sense as designers.

We look for ma­te­rials that are ea­sily over­loo­ked. We try to find the ex­traor­di­nary within the or­di­nary as a way to re­veal a story that is al­ready im­bed­ded in the ma­te­rial. Th­roughout the re­si­dence, we re­sour­ce­fully took ma­te­rials and con­tex­tually re­po­si­tio­ned them as de­sign elements.

All the wood pro­ducts were cons­truc­ted from com­po­site recyc­led ma­te­rial. OSB (orien­ted strand board), a struc­tu­ral grade buil­ding ma­te­rial com­po­sed of lef­to­ver wood chips com­pres­sed to­gether with high strength adhe­sive, was used for ca­bi­netry, struc­ture and floo­ring when conc­rete was not used. Once we san­ded, stai­ned and sea­led the ma­te­rial, the OSB floor pa­ne­ling pro­vi­des a cost ef­fec­tive and ma­te­rially res­pon­si­ble al­ter­na­tive to hard­wood. We used in­te­gral co­lo­red pig­ment stucco on the ex­te­rior so that pain­ting is ne­ver re­qui­red. Off-the-shelf ele­ments, such as in­dus­trial bristle, were used for the fins in lieu of a more costly ma­te­rial. Also, we used wood pro­ducts from other cons­truc­tion si­tes for all the conc­rete for­ming. The re­mai­ning ma­te­rials af­ter de­mo­li­tion were used for struc­tu­ral fra­ming. Ho­mo­sote, an acous­ti­cal pa­nel made from recyc­led news­pa­per, was san­ded and used as a wall fi­nish material.

In­dus­trial bristle are used as sun screen

Ma­te­rials were se­lec­ted for both per­for­mance and aesthe­tic va­lue. We re­pla­ced con­ven­tio­nal wood fra­ming with me­tal studs. We used de­com­po­sed gra­nite and per­mea­ble gra­vel in most pla­ces (inc­lu­ding the car­port and dri­ve­way) rather than non-permeable sur­face such as conc­rete or stone. These ma­te­rials allow the ground to ab­sorb wa­ter and in turn, mi­ti­gate ur­ban run-off to the ocean. So, this pro­ject is a rich and un­con­ven­tio­nal co­llage of recyc­led and sus­tai­na­ble ma­te­rials. The tex­tu­res and pa­lette of the buil­ding are low main­te­nance and at the same time pro­vide an aesthe­ti­cally ap­pea­ling landscape.

[MM]
Los An­ge­les is in many ways a test ground of archi­tec­tu­ral ex­pe­ri­men­ta­tion. How im­por­tant is ex­pe­ri­men­ta­tion in your practice?

[LS]
Ex­pe­ri­men­ta­tion is cru­cial. We have done a lot of in­te­rior pro­jects and for us, even if peo­ple think that in­te­riors are not really archi­tec­ture, it has been a la­bo­ra­tory. In­side, you have much less risks with wa­ter­proo­fing is­sues or other is­sues that you run into when you have to build on the ex­te­rior of the buil­ding. So, in­te­riors have been a tes­ting ground for cas­ting new ideas and ele­ments; al­most like a pre-stage for archi­tec­ture. So, I think it is vi­tal to ex­pe­ri­ment and to look at new ways of doing things. Un­for­tu­na­tely, it is much ea­sier to just do what you know ins­tead of tr­ying new things. Also, there is a cons­tant strug­gle or ba­lance in or­der to get the pro­ject done, not going broke and still pushing for new branches.

The So­lar Um­bre­lla ex­po­ses va­lua­ble les­sons on over­co­ming ba­rriers to green, af­for­da­ble de­ve­lop­ment and show­ca­ses new stra­te­gies and tech­no­lo­gies for others to build upon. In the last years, se­ve­ral tours and events have been help at the house. Over 1000 peo­ple have vi­si­ted the So­lar Um­bre­lla. This pro­ject ex­po­ses va­lua­ble les­sons on over­co­ming ba­rriers to green, af­for­da­ble de­ve­lop­ment and show­ca­ses new stra­te­gies and tech­no­lo­gies for other to build upon.