House of Gables

2024 Residential Design Awards Merit Recipient

Our project is a unique reconsideration of the suburban home shaped by the complex demands on contemporary residential design beyond just shelter. Homes today must be energy and resource efficient, integrate into an existing community hostile to large improvements, and accommodate complex programs and desires of contemporary family life. Our response was to creatively deploy the gable as a unifying and organizational element to gradually transition from public street to private home. The front of the house is a composition of telescoping gables at varying scales, encapsulating the porch and garage while achieving a harmonious balance between primary, secondary, and supporting elements which also minimizes bulk and scale. The garage door is hidden via a flush framed finish to emphasize the pedestrian-friendly elements like front yard and porch and allow for alternative uses and occupancy of the driveway beyond parking. The rear elevation centers around a second-floor deck, forming a gable-shaped void that connects the upper floor bedrooms to the rear yard and pool via exterior stairs. The standing seam metal roofing aligns with the vertical siding, then cascades down from the ridge through concealed gutters and hidden storm drains. The exterior envelope encapsulates an amalgam of these disparate domestic programs and created opportunities for unique interior spaces like a vaulted skylight mudroom and a rooftop office. Embracing sustainability, the house operates on solar power with all-electric systems, including heat pumps for water heating and air conditioning, and induction cooking appliances. Stormwater is collected and filtered through a filtration planter before used to irrigate the drought tolerant landscape, vegetable garden and replenishing the ground aquifer.

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A modestly sized house with a clean, appealing design on an infill lot with exceptional attention on environmental performance. This project elevates its typology and shows a replicable all-electric home, net zero home.

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Measure 1: Design for Integration

The project goals were for a modest, functional and sustainable house and ADU that would also seamlessly integrate into th existing neighborhood. Many new single family homes fall into the trap of getting too big and inefficient while clumsily hiding its shortcomings behind standard suburban forms and finishes like gables and batten board . Our approach more elegantly organized these same elements while prioritizing outdoor spaces for the benefit of the occupants and interior spaces. This inherently fostered generous access to natural light and ventilation and easy access to outdoor spaces and decks allowing passive cooling and general well being. The gable roof covered in standing seam metal transitions to vertical wall would provide a clean and elegant profile while also allow for integration of sustainable systems like solar panels and large windows and doors.

Measure 2: Design for Equitable Communities

This home is located in a suburban neighborhood where the proliferation of over sized homes has been a persistant problem and of concern for the community. Recent standards had been put in place to curb some of their impacts. Standards like enroachment and offset planes along common property lines as well as floor area limitations. Our design embraces these standards and elevate them to an elegant solution while also doubling down on the elements that make suburban homes attractive like the play with gables and emphasis on the front door and porch.

Measure 3: Design for Ecosystems

The home is fully designed to be integrated with the outdoors and landscaping. All plantings and trees are native and will attract pollinators, birds and animals as they mature. Though the context is a fully developed suburban neighborhood in Los Angeles, there are still nearby natural resources that permeate the community like the Ballona Creek which drains into a wetland near playa vista, which is only about a couple of miles away.

Measure 4: Design for Water

All rain water that fall on impermeable surfaces like the roof and upper floor decks is collected into either a filtration planter or storage tanks for landscape irrigation. All plumbing fixtures are low flow. All landscaping and plantings are native drought tolerant species. There is not a single square foot of lawn or turf planted onsite. All hardscape surfaces are permeable to allow water to percolate into the ground aquifer.

Measure 5: Design for Economy

The house floor area is smaller relative to other new homes recently built in the community. The house is 2500 s.f. while other new homes are well above 3000 s.f. Some of the spatial efficiencies include the combined laundry and kids bathroom on the second floor in lieu of multiple bathrooms in en suites and utilizing the larger upper landing at the roof access as an office space.

Measure 6: Design for Energy

This is an ALL-electric home with zero fossil fuel burning appliances or equipment including heat pumps for water heating and Air conditioning and induction cooking. Onsite renewable electricity is generated by Solar panels installed on the south facing side of the gable roof. This is complimented by passive cooling strategies achieved by covered exterior spaces (decks and patios) and multiple operable windows and doors in all spaces to maximize cross ventilation.

Measure 7: Design for Well-Being

The home is designed with an abundance of operable windows and doors that are floor to ceiling when adjacent to a yard, deck or patio. Windows are installed flushed to the ceiling even when the sill do not reach down to the floor allowing for natural light to bounce off the ceiling and into the space. For the majority of the day, the home does not require artificial light for occupancy. Almost every room in the house can be passively cooled via cross ventilation.

Measure 8: Design for Resources

The exterior finishes of the building are primarily composed of recyclable materials. The siding is a fiber cement board made up of cellulose fiber sand and cement. The roofing is a standing seam metal roof that is 100% recyclable. The fiber cement siding is also resilient to pest, warping and weathering and requires very low maintenance. The cedar siding and decking are made from reclaimed lumber.

Measure 9: Design for Change

Having both a detached home and an accessory dwelling unit will provide more resilience to future change by providing flexibility, income generation, increased property value, diversification, and sustainability. The ADU can be used for renting out for extra income, providing a space for a relative or friend, or using it as a workspace. This can help with fluctuating circumstances in the future, such as a change in the family’s needs or financial situation. Having an ADU on the property provides an additional source of income and can increase the property’s value, while providing diverse housing options and contributing to sustainability.

Measure 10: Design for Discovery

This project provided a variety of lessons and experiences we can carry into future projects, such as a smart electric sub panel that separated green (essentially solar produced onsite) and regular line electricity so that data can be collected to inform future upgrade path to either increase solar capacity or storage batteries. Our project design reorganized and rethought the implementation of the gable roof to counter the typical resistance to modern architecture as incongruent with the neighborhood. Our project is a delightful iteration of the suburban home that can’t be dismissed as just a modern box