Project material
- Category
- International
- Typology
- International
- Year
- 2025
- Location
- Internacional
- City
- Los Angeles, California
- Status
- Portfolio
A deck on stilts to inhabit the slope
Linda Terrace is a street in Pacific Palisades, Los Angeles, where the lots fall away to the west among palms and clear sky. The new house stands on the high side of the site and lets the slope keep dropping underneath it, with no platforms or retaining walls to correct it.
It resolves into two gabled volumes, slightly offset, clad in white vertical board-and-batten with black frames and dark roofs. The main floor opens its wide sliding doors onto a timber deck carried on stilts, which occupies the void of the lot and becomes the real living room of the house; a bedroom above reaches the same void through a balcony with metal railings. Stairs run down from the deck to the natural ground.
The schematic design was developed entirely in BIM — site plan, first floor, second floor and roof plan, with elevations, sections and exterior views — and several roofing options were tested on that model before one was fixed. The garden answers the dry coastal summer: agaves, succulents and flowering shrubs over gravel, a palette that holds up without attention.
The progress set as a conversation
Here the project was not presented: it was discussed. After the kick-off meeting the model grew in Revit and the studio delivered material in batches — plans, elevations, sections, roofing options, exterior views — which the client returned with comments in successive meetings. That rhythm explains the final form: the house was tuned into the hillside, adjusting how the deck lands, how the two volumes offset one another and where the afternoon light comes in, until a complete progress set could show the whole house at once.
