When filmmaker and poet Jane Stephens Rosenthal bought her 1905 Craftsman-inspired dwelling in Elysian Heights in 2013, she says she was significantly charmed by the yard’s idiosyncratic handbuilt buildings.
The earlier proprietor, a set decorator, had adorned the steep, multilevel yard with theatrical arches, a country stone hearth and a disintegrating, unpermitted open-air pavilion, which included electrical energy.
“The yard is what captivated me,” says Rosenthal, who enclosed the pavilion and turned it into her writing studio.
However she additionally knew that the unpermitted construction was not a long-term resolution. “It was a hazard,” recollects designer Ben Warwas.
Rosenthal reached out to Warwas, who, together with architect Chris Skeens, is contemporary off receiving a advantage honor for additions and ADUs at this 12 months’s American Institute of Architects, Los Angeles residential awards.
Within the hopes of making a writing studio that was as distinctive as the unique construction, Rosenthal requested the pair to design one thing contemporary and new for her yard.
“I wished my very own house to work,” says Rosenthal, who’s engaged on a coming-of-age characteristic. “However I additionally wished to maintain that whimsical vibe.”
The outcome? The last word WFH cave, the results of intense collaboration between artist, designer and architect. After 12 months of labor, held up by vital delays as a result of COVID-19, they’ve dubbed the brand new writing studio “Stiff Peaks” to acknowledge its most dramatic characteristic — a scalloped parapet that resembles crushed egg whites and disguises a roof deck the place Rosenthal can catch some rays and never be seen by her neighbors on the hill subsequent door.
The designers began with a box-themed construction however Rosenthal wished one thing extra dynamic and fascinating. “I wished a hovel, a hut,” she says.
Skeens and Warwas had been delighted by her response and proceeded to analysis primitive stucco huts.
The designers met whereas attending graduate faculty on the Southern California Institute of Structure (SCI-Arc). On this venture, their deft mix of the Los Angeles vernacular — Spanish and storybook structure — served as inspiration for the 480-square-foot studio, which incorporates the rooftop deck.
“We checked out fascinating ceilings,” Warwas explains. “As soon as we eliminated the Spanish roof, it grew to become in regards to the parapet and persevering with the Mediterranean logic.”
The studio was designed and permitted as a recreation room (if it included a kitchen and full bathtub, it might be thought of an adjunct dwelling unit, or ADU) the place Rosenthal can write and create, and plenty of of its design components — a skylight that brings the outside in and customized arched home windows and doorways impressed by Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis’ seaside home on the Greek Island of Skorpios — give the hut the texture of a sacred house.
“The contractor thought we had been constructing a church,” Skeens says with amusing.
Provides Rosenthal: “I take all my conferences within the studio and after I Zoom, the arched home windows are all anybody talks about.”
As a result of the studio, which incorporates a half toilet, faces the primary home, the designers positioned the home windows in order that Rosenthal seems out into the yard and never the home, a transfer that makes the studio really feel like an escape. “The home windows draw you exterior,” she says.
The furnishings are minimal, together with a small sofa and two chairs and a modest vintage desk the place Rosenthal works bathed in pure mild. Bohemian textiles, artworks and books add persona and heat to the interiors, however the customized home windows and doorways give the studio a traditional California indoor-outdoor really feel.
Maybe most spectacular is the writing studio’s rooftop deck, an open and uncovered room that’s hidden by a curved parapet and presents views of downtown Los Angeles. Right here, Rosenthal can take a break from work and expertise cool ocean breezes from the west beneath the shade of a mature tree cover.
“As a result of it’s on an intense hill, we noticed the constructing as an extension of the panorama,” says Skeens. “Jane can peek over the home and see downtown Los Angeles and Echo Park.”
For this pair, who collaborated on all features of the house with assist from Rosenthal, the playful components are as necessary as creating an environment friendly work-from-home atmosphere in a small footprint.
And regardless of in depth excavation and basis work as a result of hillside location — a retaining wall was vital to carry up the hill — the pair say it’s a testomony to Rosenthal that she continued with what grew to become an costly venture for such a small construction.
In structure, the shopper is usually as necessary because the architect, Warwas says.
“She was a brave shopper,” Skeens provides. “However then, she is an artist herself. She carried the idea by way of with us and have become one of many collaborators. Finally, it was about creating totally different views and moments, and seeing issues in new methods.”
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