Panorama House

View from street.

Project details

• Project Name: Panorama House
• Location of Site: Santa Monica, CA, USA
• Design Team: Jesse Bornstein, AIA, Myung Jong Lee
• Project Type: Single Family Residential
• Site Area: 8000 sf
• Built-up Area: 3238 sf
• Date of completion: October, 2006

Words from the architect

View through dining room and deck toward the east.

A home the architect designed for his family, the requirement was for a modern yet warm, light filled dwelling that captured city and ocean views while addressing the challenges of a narrow, sloping site.

Vertical circulation core.

Two primary formal strategies are employed in response to site, code and the intention to create dynamic space and optimize views. 1. The available building envelope is carved into a series of volumes with shed roofs that parallel the slope of site. 2. Stepping horizontal floor plates, viewing decks and roof planes attach to the shed roof volumes.

Living area.

A rich spatial experience is created within the formal interplay of these horizontal and sloped roof forms. The horizontal ceilings and broad eaves help encourage and extend one's eye into the landscape. This outward looking, or extroverted, effect is counterposed with the shed roof forms that help provide a spatial experience of containment or introversion.

Family room, poolside.

A systemic logic in the application of finish materials and detailing reinforce the design concepts of the house to create a unified living environment out of a complex set of parts.

Living room looking east.

Like the grain pattern in wood worn by wind and water, there is a linear east-west directional pattern that runs throughout the house. This trajectory in line with prevailing ocean breezes is expressed in open-riser metal stairs, FSC Certified wood floor and deck plank patterns, and metal siding and roofing standing seam patterns.

Open-riser steel stair with wood treads.

Exterior and interior clear and translucent sliding glass doors mediate between spaces; as panels slide into wall cavities the house completely opens to itself and to the outdoors. The boundaries between in and out are blurred by finish materials (metal cladding, masonry, plaster, wood floor/deck) common to both the interior and exterior of the house.

Photograph by Tom Bonner, courtesy Jesse Bornstein Architecture.

The open volume of the stairwell provides spatial interaction between floor levels. The sitting room "loft" that looks down to the house's primary living space is another example of the vertical interplay between spaces. The front studio also has a open loft space and the two children's rooms share a playroom loft accessed by ships ladders.

Photograph by Tom Bonner, courtesy Jesse Bornstein Architecture.

Photograph by Tom Bonner, courtesy Jesse Bornstein Architecture.

Photograph by Tom Bonner, courtesy Jesse Bornstein Architecture.

Credits

• Text: Jesse Bornstein, AIA
• Photographs: Tom Bonner