Centered Home, Single Storey House Design in Los Angeles

Approaching Centered Home from the street, a dense screen of San Pedro cacti makes way for a minimalist rectilinear form clad in charred shou sugi ban rain screen siding, standing in contrast to the landscape’s polychromatic lushness. Informed by a balance of meditative solitude and exuberant communal living, the home is designed as a series of nested conditions organized concentrically: an interior “cube,” within a mediating shell of space for communal activities, within the perimeter of the landscape. Most private programs are at the core, and the most public is oriented in relationship to the landscape and city beyond. Intimate activities like bathing, meditation, stretching, and sleeping take place within the central “cube” volume, while communal activities like cooking together, watching football with friends, and taking on creative projects occur between the cube and the exterior shell. Carefully detailed millwork on the face of the cube facilitates a smooth transition between these zones: one zo