Pugh + Scarpa’s 1,800-square-foot Vail-Grant House, in Silverlake, Calif., currently under construction, offers a happy integration of the technical challenge posed by a steep hillside and a heartfelt, crafted response to a very specific site. Building adjacent to a Neutra house in this “architectonically rich neighborhood in Los Angeles,” the architects also imbued the house with their trademark concern for site and environment.

The Vail-Grant House is of the hill, not on it. Its form derives as much from the setback and step-back requirements of its steep site as from the topography itself: The code requires a lower building height towards the street and permits a taller structure further up the hill. Capitalizing on that regulation, the architects created a multi-height structure that allows the house to be located close to and in harmony with the smaller scale of the street, and be tall enough to take advantage of spectacular views further back on its lot.

“The building’s movement on the site describes a spiral that begins at a lower point closest to the street, travels up the hill, and then turns back towards the street and the lake, overlooking itself and creating an enclosed court in the center,” the architects say. “The building volume is created by a simple extrusion of a square, a neutral elongated twisted box projected into the site and sculpted along its contours. The folded roof is skewed where directed views or openings are desired.”

Neatly sequenced planes
Through a succession of planes that follow directly the topography, movement through the building reflects the experience of walking up the hill, the architects say. The building’s movement on the site describes a spiral that begins at a lower point closest to the street, travels up the hill, and then turns back towards the street and the lake. An 18-foot-high entrance hall divides the building into its private and public domains. From there, the space flows down to the children’s room and the master bedroom, ending in a window that takes up the entire volumetric section. On the other side of the entrance hall, the stair leads up to the kitchen and dining room. A long window towards the hill allows air to circulate through the building from a low window in the living area, providing cross ventilation. A built-in, stand-alone wooden box containing the guest bathroom defines the transition between the kitchen and the living zone.

Excavating the corner where the roof lifts creates space for a covered patio entered from the dining area. The patio in turn allows access to the back yard, a 15-foot-wide excavated space that continues the succession of planes to create a transition from the interior landscape to the hill.

To keep costs down, the architects are employing structural concrete insulated panels (SCIP), a lightweight, easy-to-assemble structural system that allowed them to adjust building height to topography. It has proven more cost-effective than cast-in-place walls and cuts down on the need for the large retaining walls that a single-height structure would have required. Limiting the building to 15 feet wide throughout reduces spans and simplifies construction. Environmentally, the SCIP construction provides an R-40 average insulation value for the entire house. The panels are made from 100 percent recycled and post-consumer foam and have a 50 percent fly-ash content.

Energy independent
When completed, the Vail-Grant Residence will be 100 percent energy independent. First, the house’s passive energy-saving strategies include: locating and orienting the building to control solar cooling loads, shaping and orienting the building for exposure to prevailing winds and to induce buoyancy for natural ventilation, designing windows to maximize daylighting, shading south-facing windows and minimizing west-facing glazing, and shaping and planning the interior to enhance daylight and natural air flow distribution.

A large viewing window allows the sun to heat an interior concrete slab, creating natural convection for heated and cooled air that rises through the interior and vents out the building’s uppermost portions. Solar PV panels on the slope behind the house produce enough electricity to make the house completely self-sustained. Additionally, small-diameter pipes placed through the SCIP panels and into the hillside bring 60ºF air into the building for natural air-conditioning.

“A topography sculpted of folded, skewed metal planes, the Vail House seems to enter into a love affair with the hill, blurring the boundaries between the natural and the artificial,” is how the architects describe their handiwork. “By responding to the visceral aspects of the site, both physical and regulatory, a unique sustainable and economic design was achieved.”

—SS

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