05 Canyon House

Amidst a kaleidoscope of expressive architecture in this Los Angeles neighborhood, Daniel Rabin and Annie Ritz of And And And Studio designed a house that maintains a poker face on its facade but riffs on the shape of the arch to reveal itself inside. The site is much wider than it is deep, so the designers stacked two boxes to accommodate the limited depth. Rabin and Ritz stamped crisp two dimensional arches into the exterior of the Spanish-style structure, while inside they concentrated the arches where the stacked boxes overlap and where structure, systems, and circulation are contained. The arches are repeated to form doorways, thresholds, hallways, and window openings or blended together like colliding waves to create vaulting that gives the pared-down structure a sculptural depth.