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A small house with a big view in Los Angeles? He built it on Mt. Washington.

Mark Arnold had owned a few different houses in Los Angeles and Palm Springs, but none of them fulfilled a dream he had harbored since childhood. “I always Mark Arnold, a nurse and architect, decided to build a modernist structure that reflected his taste and ideas on how to live well in Los Angeles. He chose to focus on a 0.15 acre lot on Mount Washington and found a suitable location for the project. The house was built around retaining walls that sit on concrete piles that extend deep into the earth and features a shape-shifting interior that can be changed by moving the sliding wall panels. It is equipped with a wall-mounted closet with drawers and hanging space behind the doors.

A small house with a big view in Los Angeles?  He built it on Mt. Washington.

Опубликовано : 12 месяцев назад от Juliana Langley в

Mark Arnold had owned a few different houses in Los Angeles and Palm Springs, but none of them fulfilled a dream he had harbored since childhood. “I always wanted to build my own house,” he said.

Mr. Arnold, 62, an intensive care nurse with a keen interest in architecture and design, relished the idea of ​​building a modernist structure that reflected his taste and ideas on how to live well. Specifically, he wasn’t interested in living in a big house full of empty rooms that he wouldn’t use.

“I wanted a small architectural house,” he said. “Only for one person.”

When she read an article about a tiny house on a tiny lot in the Echo Park neighborhood of Los Angeles that Simon Storey, the architect who founded Anonymous Architects, designed for himself, she felt she had found the perfect partner. Upon meeting Mr. Storey, his instincts were confirmed.

“We hit it off right away,” Arnold said. “He totally understood the kind of concepts he was thinking of.”

With an architect selected, there was only one more hurdle, but it was a major one: finding a lot in Los Angeles that he could afford. He searched Silver Lake and Echo Park, but had no luck. He later found out about an unusual location on Mount Washington. When he went out to see it, he had a hard time finding it. The terrain was so steep, he said, “it was just a railing and a cliff.”

But the view of the city was impressive. And when Mr. Arnold slid to the edge of the 0.15 acre lot, he could see that it wasn’t really a cliff. There was land below, but the slope receded like a black diamond ski slope.

He asked Mr. Storey to take a look and the architect deemed the site a good buy. “Obviously, it’s incredibly steep,” Storey said. “But steepness doesn’t necessarily mean it’s not buildable. What makes it buildable is the geology. And we’re pretty lucky in Los Angeles to have really steep lots that are actually pretty healthy below the surface.”

Mr. Arnold bought it for $45,000 in July 2013, and Mr. Storey went to work on the design. The architect conceived plans that called for a small garage at street level; a staircase down to the roof of the house, which would serve as an outdoor patio; and 975 square feet of living space below that.

Although the home is small, Mr. Storey maximized the size by pushing the footprint toward the required setbacks from the lot lines. “You don’t have the luxury of endless square footage,” he said. “So you need to capture the square footage you have and make it do as much as possible.”

The resulting house, which is built around retaining walls that sit on concrete piles that extend deep into the earth, has a shape-shifting interior that can be changed by moving the sliding wall panels. When the panels are tucked away, the house feels almost like a loft, with open views between the living room, master bedroom, and study. If guests come over and Mr. Arnold doesn’t want his bedroom on display, one of the panels slides out to close it. If a guest is spending the night in the study, which is furnished with a discreet Murphy bed, two more panels slide down to create a wall between it and the kitchen, while a third panel separates it from the bedroom.

In the compact bedroom, “everything is built in,” Arnold said, including a wall-mounted closet with drawers and hanging space behind the doors, drawers under the bed, and wall-mounted nightstands. “I don’t have big closets and things like that, but there’s a lot of storage because we’re doing it smarter.”

One of the most unexpected features of the house is the small pool that Mr. Storey placed between the house and the hillside, accessible from the roof. Underwater, it is possible to look into the house through a window in the back wall of the kitchen.

To finish the interior, Mr. Arnold worked with Sarah Rosenhaus, a friend and interior designer. “He really wanted to create warmth within this incredible super-modern structure that they were building,” Ms. Rosenhaus said.

To do that, she and Mr. Arnold found vintage Brazilian and mid-century modern furniture, including a Jangada armchair by Jean Gillon that was given pride of place in the living room.

“We also looked to incorporate color by giving each different space its own palette, even though it’s one big, open room,” Ms. Rosenhaus said.

In the bedroom, they chose a bed with a plum-colored headboard and a salmon-colored bedspread. In the study, they installed a bespoke sofa upholstered in rust-colored corduroy velvet. For the living room, they selected an off-white rug and a linen-covered daybed to let the green of Mr. Arnold’s houseplants shine through.

None of that happened quickly or cheaply. After purchasing the property, it took Mr. Arnold years to obtain the necessary permits for construction, which began in September 2017. Approval for a septic system was then revoked and Mr. Arnold had to pay to extend the sewer. public to your home. property in place.

Just as the project was nearing completion, the pandemic hit. Mr. Arnold was overwhelmed at work, trapped in a rental apartment and unable to obtain the certificate of occupancy he needed to move into his new home. “We couldn’t get the inspectors to inspect,” he said. “I was in the Covid nightmare here, having to pay my house payment, my rent, and all these extra house costs.”

The only silver lining was that Mr. Arnold could work as many overtime hours as he wanted, because nurses were in high demand. “If he needed some money for the house,” he said, “he could work more.”

In December 2020, he finally got approval to move in. Although he had budgeted around $700,000 for the project, the total cost ended up being more than $1.1 million, much of which he paid for with a construction loan.

However, Mr. Arnold is confident that it was a good investment. “I don’t think you can get a $1.1 million house anywhere in Los Angeles right now,” he said.

And most importantly, the home represents the realization of a lifelong dream.

“I did this,” he said. “It’s amazing to think about it. The house is amazing and I love living here.”

Living Small is a bi-weekly column exploring what it takes to lead a simpler, more sustainable, or more compact life.

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Темы: California, Los Angeles

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