Oak Pass
LA/Beverly Hills, CA

A primary residence on a mountaintop overlooking the LA Basin for a three-generation family: two grandparents, two parents, and four children. They have three common interests; storytelling, agriculture, and tennis. A large concrete roof will "tent" a large open interior with three levels and four zones, one for each generation and one for all of them.

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The architecture is a 21st C. tribute to John Lautner, a 20th C. Master of Architecture. Why?

The land was once the shape of a hilltop. It was reshaped to accommodate a house that was never built. Upon visiting the site and seeing the cut land, I reminisced seeing a similar site on a hilltop in the Silver Lake District of Los Angeles when I was a young boy. Mr. Lautner completed the hill once again with a large concrete curving roof - a concrete tent is how I always remembered it.

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The Oak Pass is a re-imagined concrete tent with the bedrooms conceived as more cave-like spaces.

The tent is for the family in an active, creative mode and the caves are for the each of the family members to recenter and restore. There are three zones, one for each generation, and generous spaces for all family gatherings with friends. The parents have a vineyard for urban wine-making, the children have a farm to learn about the science of soil and plants and to be a part of the farmers market circuit, and the grandparents bridge both. Each generation has different architectural desires that span the familiarity of tradition and memory to the unfamiliarity of invention and action.