Located along a congested area of Laurel Canyon Boulevard, the buildability of this parcel was heavily questioned due to the site’s steep up-slope, an active creek and 20 feet of backfill. In negotiating the imposed location for the house, an inverted orientation emerged, turning away from the heavily trafficked street and towards the lush hillside and creek found within the property. The house was conceived as the interlocking of two concepts of dwelling, consisting of an opaque volume, screening the residents from the noise and intensity of Laurel Canyon Boulevard and a thin scrim of metal and glass, supporting a porous relationship between the interior spaces and the nature beyond. The house consists of a series of contiguous living spaces that open to the terrace, expanding the interior deep into the site and over the creek.
The Wall House
The residence, located on a 60’ x 145’ corner lot in Santa Monica, developed from the desire for privacy as well as an interest in optimizing outdoor living. In addition, this project questions the local tendency to maximize perimeter security, at the cost of the interior environment, through a system of layered landscape walls. It is within these walls that a series of micro-landscapes are established. Building upon the typology of the perimeter security wall, this new edge delimits a varying set of boundaries, protecting interior space as it expands outside.
Along the street elevations, an opaque enclosure wraps the house. Service and private program line the street, maximizing the privacy of the interior programs. Within the property, the building enclosure erodes, rendering the threshold between the living spaces and the garden seamless.
Project Team: Aaron Neubert, Mike Jacobs (Principals), Michael Alamo, Blair Ellis, Raquel Contreras, Jeremy Fletcher, Juan Garcia, Pascha Goodwin, Gabriel Leung, Sebastian Salvado /
Structural Engineer: Gordon Polon Consulting Engineers /
Mechanical Engineer: The Sullivan Partnership / General Contractor: G and A Development
NHN House
The site consisted of an up-sloping hillside lot with a dilapidated 1920’s bungalow, lacking any engagement with the garden or the views to Downtown and the Silver Lake Hills. The design was conceived to reference the “memory” of the original bungalow, limit the environmental impact of an increased footprint, engage the outdoor living area, and appropriate the natural vistas.
The residence maximizes a compact footprint to achieve the primary objective of engaging the multiple landscapes of the property. High use spaces are located on the main level to directly access the exterior via the Patio and Balcony. The Master Suite is located on the upper level to create a ?retreat? from the activities of the home, while being connected quickly by descending the stair to the hub of the main level or surveying the property from the Roof Deck. Utilitarian spaces are located on street level. Three pairs of pocketing glass doors act as valves to affect the interior use and exterior connection with the landscape, while modulating the home’s environmental exposure.
Sycamore House
The design direction for an 800 sf master suite addition was determined by the peninsular shape of the property and the desire to respect the 1950?s post & beam house. The addition’s orientation emerged as the negotiation between the existing house, the sloping site, and a beloved sycamore tree.
By perpendicularly positioning the addition between the existing house and the street setback, the relationship between the interior of the house and the landscape are reinforced. The cantilever of the addition extends over the hillside, projecting the interior into the tree canopy. Conversely, the sycamore tree is incorporated into the house, literally penetrating the space of the bedroom.
Fox Loft
The design for this 1400 sf loft developed in response to three distinct programmatic mandates; privacy for sleep, a large amount of storage and flat surfaces for work, food prep and entertaining. Responding to the “shoebox” geometry of the existing space, a hot rolled steel ?wrapper? was constructed to both establish entry and to direct occupants deep into the space. The hard outer surface of the wrapper is offset by the plush interior liner of the sleeping platform.
A modular system of Baltic birch shelves extends the length of the loft from the kitchen and into the living areas. Four complimentary box lengths were established to minimize the material waste and cost of the storage system. Two 10? long bent steel and CNC milled plywood tables were developed to accommodate the desk/bar and kitchen prep counters.
The work of ANX begins with a fundamental optimism with regards to the continued value and impact that design and architecture have on our cities and their inhabitants. Our approach is positive, opportunistic, and intellectually flexible with every theoretical and commissioned project – both large and small. Our belief is that one can affect significant change through a careful analysis and deconstruction of project conditions, and the application of a thoughtful, conceptually rigorous process.
Constraints are opportunities. A broad analysis of a project’s site conditions, environmental context, program, budget, schedule, and jurisdictional parameters are mined for latent opportunities to be metabolized towards innovative and novel design solutions. Our process resists the autonomous and pure in favor of the dependent, messy, and dirty possibilities of a poetic inclusion of multiple and often conflicting influences.This process ultimately leads to the intersection of architecture, landscape, and urban networks, and the inherent negotiations necessary to implement a coherent experience respectful of the impact upon the environment.
Assumptions are challenged. Our understanding of the capacity for design to organize complex systems with thoughtful intention, environmental appropriateness, and a practical dose of both form and function, is coupled with our belief in the responsibility of the designer to ask questions and challenge assumptions of the built environment. Our ongoing interest in developing experiences that explore space, scale, orientation, light, detail, materiality, and emerging technologies is demonstrated in a wide range of residential, institutional, commercial and landscape projects that question, and when appropriate, inflect existing paradigms.
Flexibility is required. We do not jump to conclusions; we test conventional and novel solutions to problems with equal fervor. The manipulation and application of accepted organizational typologies, as well as the transposition of foreign typologies are all fair game. Our design process takes into consideration numerous configurations for all projects and attempts to embed conceptual rigor within each. However, the project’s performance is maintained as the ultimate proof of its success.
Collaborations are embraced. To this end, the work of the studio draws on the expertise of the principal, staff, clients, consultants, and a diverse network of contractors, designers, artists and fabricators. In addition to founding ANX, Aaron Neubert co-founded the multidisciplinary studio Orenj, to focus on the development of material and product interests as applied to architectural production.
ANX has recently been featured in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times and LA Architect. In 2010, the Flicker House was awarded the Next LA Merit Award from the AIA LA Chapter. In addition, the Glass House won a 2007 Merit Award from the AIA SFV Chapter and APN: 5435-030-020 won a 2003 Next LA Merit Award from the AIA LA Chapter. The work of Aaron Neubert has been presented in lectures at The University of Southern California and Woodbury University in Los Angeles, The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen, Denmark and The Van Alen Institute in New York City.
