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Design Dilemma: Modern and Private in Venice, CA

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Recently, we ventured to Brooklyn, New York, to visit a beautiful modernized Victorian plunked down in an urban environment. Today, we visit the opposite coast to find another beautiful, modern home, also part of the urban fabric, but this time in Los Angeles.

This Venice home by Kevin Daly Architects has a unique shape which manages to look sleek and very modern while avoiding that “cold cube” feel that many modern structures have.

Let’s take a look:

Admittedly from this street view, the home at first seems to be exactly the cold cube we mentioned above. This is, in part, intentional, as the house turns it’s back to the street to provide its residents with privacy.  The lot is actually composed of two houses — a two-bed­room rear main house and a front pied-a-terre above the garage. It’s a re­ver­sal of the usual design of front main house and backyard pied-a-terre. Before the remodel, this home was a dated 1980s re­model in an Amer­i­can South­west­ern style. With the remodel, all aspects of Southwestern style were banished in favor of a very open, modern, international look.

Below a view of the kitchen:

And here, a view of the dining room, facing out onto a courtyard:

According to the architects, the pri­mary de­sign chal­lenges was al­lowing shared use of the home by an ex­tended fam­ily while main­tain­ing vary­ing lev­els of pri­vacy. The two story façade fac­ing the court­yard be­came en­tirely glazed, which is in turn shaded by a fold­ing, per­fo­rated metal skin that rests on an alu­minum ex­oskele­ton.

Here’s another view of the exoskeleton:

And here:

The brilliant aspect of the aluminum frame and skin is that it provides privacy from the outside, while giving the home a sense of movement that can be enjoyed from both the inside and outside, alike. It also provides for space for a wraparound patio and veranda that is partially protected from prying eyes, important in this well-trafficked pedestrian neighborhood.

Here we see a stairway to the second level from the dining room:

And here, another view of the kitchen and dining area:

And here’s the view from an upper level bathroom. All rooms have direct access out to a veranda, since outdoor living is important in California.

Here’s a closer view of the aluminum screen that wraps around the exoskeleton. This per­fo­rated skin and sup­port­ing alu­minum ar­ma­ture was de­signed as a sun shade and to pro­vide pri­vacy and fil­tered nat­ural light into the main liv­ing spaces of the house and apart­ment. In ad­di­tion they form the sup­port struc­ture for bal­conies that ex­tend from the mas­ter bed­room of the main house and the apart­ment to al­low fam­ily mem­bers to see each other across the prop­erty.

We applaud this home for feeling, bright, modern, open, yet private at the same time. Here’s to California living!