Location: Rancho Palos Verdes, CA
Date: 2022
Category: Single Family Residential

About this Project:

• Scope: Architects and Interior Architects for Renovation and New Construction

• Floor Area: 2,200 sf

• Site Area: 15,000 sf

• Render: HansonLA

It is a classic test of architecture. How does one work with a round building? Round buildings are geometric puzzles. They are complete unto themselves. And, when they are done well, they are iconic, testaments to designer skill and instant markers in the landscape. House with a Heart is a residence that has a round house at its core. It is a celebration of a round house, one that honors its integrity, while improving its functionality and expanding its reach.

The goal of House with a Heart was to maintain the purity and simple elegance of a round mid-century house (designed by Architect Alfred T. Gilman, 1956) while adding 1600 square-feet of inhabitable space. The new construction is, in turn, offset from and dug into the sloping earth surrounding the original circular footprint. Divided into four rectangular pavilions, the arrangement of the new structures organizes the site into alternating indoor-outdoor rooms connected overhead by curvilinear roofs that slope away from and prioritize the focal form. The roofs, structured as green surfaces and planted with native vegetation, integrate further into the site, blending with the landscape and contrasting with the round house’s clean lines and materiality. Each pavilion has a distinct use, one for recreation and support and three personal quarters for sleeping. The original round house, then, has been cleared of its interior partitions and is redesigned as a living space that opens in all directions. The enclosures of the pavilions and the round house are mostly glass, mostly transparent. The round house is resolved as a hub for fluid movement, literal and visual, across both pocket and expansive vistas.