Set on a rare, large vacant site in the Hollywood Hills, this new home for a young family explores ideas about living in Los Angeles — the extremes of the environment (the sun, the smog, earthquakes, fires) and a cultural drive toward maximizing experience, along with the easy pleasure of Southern California’s lifestyle. The 3,750-square-foot house is conceived as a series of experiential “chambers,” rooms and outdoor spaces, each designed to heighten their spatial, material and chromatic elements. The effect is one of intensity and even strangeness, parsed by calm, neutral transitions. At the same time, a conscious response to the untamed nature of the site is intrinsic to the design.
The house is cut into the steeply sloping site, presenting as a single story to the street above. The main, living level of the house sits a full story below the street with access through the warped, gridded car court and ramp down to the sun plaza. A CMU wall, composed of standard blocks, encloses this “first room” and enhances privacy; the home’s upper floor just peeks above. The plaza, with views to Burbank and the San Fernando Valley beyond, is the expanded living space of the house: its cast concrete fire pit and dipping pool flow from the kitchen, living and dining area of the lower floor. A subterranean “control room,” tucked into the landscape, houses all the home’s audio and video systems. A fully cast-in-place concrete bunker, this family gathering space is isolated from the real world except for four light canons, angled to grab light from different portions of the sky.
The bedroom level above is wrapped in a kinked and faceted, painted and perforated aluminum rain screen — a protective skin against the intensity of the LA sun and drifting wildfire embers. The master bedroom sits at the head of this volume, opening to the valley view. Two kid’s bedrooms (one currently used as an office) are joined through a jack-and-jill bathroom clad in droog D-tile. The street-side bedroom enjoys a lovely cactus garden wrapped by the concrete block street wall. A guest suite, occupying the leg of the bedroom volume, has its own entry and can function separately from the rest of the house.
The garage, with a roll-up door in dichroic glass, accommodates both cars and a motorcycle fabrication shop, a hobby of one of the owners. The garage volume, clad in black cement panel, sits in juxtaposition to the brighter and whiter materiality of the house, a dark object that mediates the sequences in and out of the house.
Architect - Envelope Architecture + Design
GC - Dowbuilt
Architectural Metal Fabrication - Zahner
Photographs + Drawings Courtesy of Envelope A+D
Personal contribution to preliminary design and pre-construction coordination of Metal rainscreen system with the Zahner Team
Located in the vibrant Mission Bay neighborhood of San Francisco, The Exchange on 16th Street will provide 750,000 square feet of Class 'A' office space that features "people first" design and luxury amenities such as a bike spa, ground level retail and a rooftop garden. With close proximity to BART, Muni, Caltrain, cycling routes and I-280, The Exchange aims to integrate mobility into the daily work life of its tenants.
Parking for the project will consist of 663 structured podium parking spaces. Because parking occupancy can reasonably be expected to exceed self-park capacity, Watry Design studied several options to create flexibility and maximize on-site parking during peak usage. After studying several options, the team is recommending a self-parking and valet parking program, with mechanical "stackers" over the drive aisles to increase capacity. A Parking Access and Revenue Control System (PARCS) that allows for multiple payment options, including pay in advance, validation, pay by phone and multiple pay rate scenarios that can change within the same day will help control parking demand and expedite throughput.
Owner - Kilroy Realty Corporation
Design Architect - Flad Architects
Contractor - Hathaway Dinwiddie
Architectural Metal Fabrication - Zahner
Personal contribution to preliminary design and pre-construction coordination of Metal rainscreen system with the Zahner Team
The Brickell Flatiron collaboration is a classic example of the Zahner Assist process, which delivers an enhanced value to the Design Assist phase by developing system details, project budgets, and engineering specifications that create a general framework that the construction team can easily follow throughout the fabrication and installation phase.
Brickell Flatiron is a residential high-rise that towers above the Brickell district of Miami, Florida, at 736 ft. The name “flatiron” references the triangular lot that the 64-floor condominium sits on.
Zahner worked closely with the architect, Luis Revuelta, and CMC Group to support the design and pricing exercises of the 13-story parking garage façade at the building podium. In total, the design team went through four iterations before ultimately determining that the final design both creatively complimented the curvilinear forms of the architecture above and met the established budget.
Once the design and budget were finalized, we continued to work with Moss Construction to coordinate the engineering and lead time for delivery. Zahner also produced a full-scale visual mockup for the architect’s approval and self-performed the installation on-site.
After the building was topped-out, the owner and architect felt the desire for an extra façade at the crown. Zahner successfully delivered the extra scope under a tight timeline.
Zahner Assist makes any project possible. From design, prototyping and engineering, to fabrication and installation, we have the experience and engineering acumen under one roof to make projects feasible, affordable, and incredible.
Project Team:
Architect - Revuelta Architecture International
Architect of record - Luis Revuelta
Owner - CMC Group
GC - Moss Construction
Photographer - Curtis Smith, ARKO
Personal contribution to preliminary design and pre-construction coordination of Metal rainscreen system with the Zahner Team
The project is the addition of a dining room, reading room and two bedroom suites to an ex-isting 1948 adobe-brick house. Four volumes control view and orchestrate movement through their various internal and external alignments. The reading of the solid/void relationship oscillates between additive and subtractive processes.
On the one hand understood as a series of connected volumes while on the other seen as an initially pure box from which two L-forms are removed. The result is a rhythmic reciprocity between interior space and garden.
AIA East Bay: 2014 Exceptional Residential Bay Area Design Award
Project with Alexander Jermyn Architecture
Location: Palo Alto, CA
1,100 Square Feet
Project Team:
Alexander Jermyn
Ajay Manthripragada
Jonathan Cotte
“Cellular Origami” is the name of our design for the new façade for USCF’s 3rd Street garage in san Francisco’s Mission Bay neighborhood that was produced in response to an invited design competition.
The competition brief was to create a new façade for UCSF’ 3rd street Garage, which had its earlier façade made of channel glass removed a number of years ago.
The project was initiated to both bring a stronger identity and sense of brand to USCF’s campus edge and to create a dialogue with the high-profile new architecture rising directly across 3rd street, Including the new Warriors NBA Arena (Chase center) and new Uber HQ.
Cellular origami borrows its name from the name of pioneer DNA editing research being carried out at UCSF.
The design takes inspiration from the spiraling form of DNA strands, here transformed, flattened and refolded to form of an array of anodized metal panels.
The panel array creates a dynamic pattern of varyingly angled “petals” that have constantly changing intensities of reflected daylight throughout the day.
Role: Preliminary Façade system design and consulting with IwamotoScott Architects for A.Zahner
Project Team:
Architect - IwamotoScott Architects
GC - Plant
Metal Panel Fabrication & Installation - Acosta & Sons
Structural Engineer of record - Hohbach-Lewin Inc.
Engineering Consultant - Tipping Structural engineers
Photograph - IwamotoScott architects
The Lamprich Medical Center is an OSHPD 3 facility featuring a combined program which includes an Outpatient Rural Health Clinic, a Rehabilitation Clinic, a Retail Pharmacy and Administrative Offices.
The siting and circulatory requirements within a greater Regional Health Care Cam-pus informed both the form as well as the programmatic layout of the building. Pub-lic access through the building to the adjacent Frank R. Howard Memorial Hospital serves as the principal organizing feature, dividing the building into two gabled wings.
The simplicity of the form is punctured by skylit interior corridors and warm cedar cut-outs at each of the main points of entry. Careful detailing and harmonized mate-rials encourage a therapeutic spatial quality both inside and out.
Project with Alexander Jermyn Architecture
Location: Willits, CA
16,000 Square Feet
Project Team:
Alexander Jermyn
Niknaz Aftahi
Vincent Barry
Jonathan Cotte
Sarah Ebner
Daniela Tenorio
WeWork’s mission is to “create a world where people work to make a life, not just a living”. Community is the catalyst that drives the transparency and layout of the shared office spaces for different businesses.
Adjacent to the University of California Berkeley Campus, this 7 story renovation of an existing building provides a new entry from the street, expansive views to the Bay, and a diverse mix of glass walled offices, vibrantly colored conference rooms, and lively commons spaces for networking, eating, and drinking.
Project with Alexander Jermyn Architecture
Location: Berkeley, CA
40,000 Square Feet
Project Team:
Alexander Jermyn
Jonathan Cotte
