Lagattuta Residence

Typology Residential

Location Los Angeles, California

Completed 2007

Size 2,875 SF

This simple and compact pavilion-like home is fairly enclosed, a two-story rectangle with an adjacent walled-in courtyard. Located in a historic residential neighborhood in Southern California, the Lagattuta Residence was built on a narrow parcel on a relatively tight budget.

Additional Credits: John Linden (photography)

Design Approach

Embracing the project’s inherent site and monetary challenges, we stripped the home to its essentials in both design and construction. The most immediate complication was the lack of building area for the desired structural components. To open up the required space for the courtyard area, our working linear plan was only twenty-two feet deep, spreading along the northern edge of the fifty-foot wide site.

The interior programming is open and intuitive, the ground floor one room containing kitchen, dining and living spaces with the second floor holding a study and master suite; the exterior is likewise uncomplicated and efficient, the lower level clad in plaster and the upper with ribbed, interlocking aluminum panels. Glass sliding doors open to the crisply composed courtyard composed of a small lawn and a sunken patio, complete with an outdoor dining area and fire pit.

Reminiscent of Los Angeles' mid-century Case Study homes, the Lagattuta Residence is both modernist throwback and an elegant solution to space and budgetary restrictions.