tony61 – Page 3 – Corsini Stark Architects

6600 Sunset

The Churriguera-style two-story commercial building at the corner of Sunset Boulevard and Seward Street in the commercial heart of historic Hollywood was built in 1928 and is designated a historic resource by the City of Los Angeles. The building was rehabilitated for creative office space on the second floor and for restaurant use at the double-height ground floor, which is home to celebrity chef Curtis Stone’s Gwen Restaurant. The 10,000 SF building was seismically upgraded and building infrastructure updated to current standards.

CSA designed a four-story, 23,000 SF creative office addition over the building’s L-shaped surface parking lot. Devising an innovative at-grade tandem mechanical lift parking configuration, never done before in Los Angeles, allowed a full build-out of the zoning envelope without costly underground parking. This innovative parking concept made the entire project economically feasible.

The workspaces are organized around double-height volumes, mezzanines, and exterior roof terraces that frame views of local landmarks including the Hollywood Hills and Sign, Blessed Sacrament Church, and downtown LA to create a unique indoor-outdoor southern California work environment.

The addition is home to the co-working space Sand House and the regional headquarters of famous toy manufacturer The Lego Group.

CATEGORY	INFORMATION
Project Type	Creative Workplace, Historic Preservation, Mixed-Use, Urban Infill
Location	Hollywood, Los Angeles, CA
Status	Completed 2015
Size	33,300 sq. feet

Stover Cottet Residence

Addition and renovation of mid-century modern residence, $1.2 million construction budget; 3,700 SF

CATEGORY	INFORMATION
Project Type	Single-Family Residence
Location	Beverly Hills, CA
Status	Completed 2008
Size	3,700 sq. feet

Perlita Mews

Perlita Mews demonstrates that sustainable urban density is achievable while maintaining and improving the desirable character of residential neighborhoods and in a manner suitable for families and extended families with children. A community of 23 small-lot single-family homes, accessed along an internal alley, this compact arrangement of houses is made possible by the City of Los Angeles’ Small Lot Ordinance.

The front houses are entered directly from the street. Most of these houses also have an entrance to the second floor from the alley. The rear houses are accessed directly from the alley. This arrangement allows the street-facing houses to have a third bedroom with a separate entry that can be used as a granny flat, home office, or studio apartment. Also, two adjacent houses can be combined, with minor alterations, into a single large 6-bedroom courtyard house. We believe this flexible and adaptable concept is unique in Southern California and will create both a neighborhood community suitable for young families, extended families, and substantial privacy for people who desire it.

CATEGORY	INFORMATION
Project Type	23 Single-Family Residences
Location	Atwater Village, Los Angeles, CA
Status	Completed 2012
Size	Lot size: 35,400 SF Units: 1300 — 1600 SF

Gilbert Kivett Residence

The corner lot at the base of San Jacinto Mountain in the Vista Las Palmas tract in Palm Springs included an altered mid-century residence originally designed by Charles Dubois. The house has a simple, gabled roof originally in the ‘Atomic Ranch’ style and sweeping mountain views to the west and south. The new owners desired a comprehensive, contemporary, and visually connected redo of both interior and exterior spaces within the property. The project buildout included approximately 600 SF of new interior space, including a new freestanding pool pavilion at the southeast corner of the property. The pavilion anchors the new rear yard pool space and provides needed covered exterior space on the site during the typical hot desert days.

The existing 2,800 SF one-story residence is completely remodeled with new finish materials, fixtures, equipment, and minor flow changes to enhance the interior/exterior connections of the site. The project site improvements included expanding the pool, enlarging the spa, a new bocce ball court, a pool room and a new entry sequence that opens up to the street. Linking the existing residence with the exterior uses was achieved by layering the property from west to east with walls, landscaping, water features and hardscape elements that unify the site as you move through it. The existing residence was then made as porous as possible to weave the exterior and interior spaces together. Large-format terrazzo tiles, vertical-grain Douglas fir cabinetry and colorful Heath tiles provide a consistent palette throughout the interiors.

CATEGORY	INFORMATION
Project Type	Single-Family Residence
Location	Palm Springs, CA
Status	Completed 2014
Size	3,300 sq. feet

Gainsburg House

Lloyd Wright, son of Frank Lloyd Wright, designed the low-slung Gainsburg House in 1946 in the spirit of his father’s Usonian House prototypes of the 1930s.

Like those houses, the Gainsburg House was planned close to the land on a triangular grid and constructed with modest materials. The new owners sought to reverse years of insensitive alterations while including a new kitchen, dining and family rooms, updated bathrooms, lighting and finishes, with accommodation for contemporary art display. We introduced a new color palette to distinguish the contemporary work while complementing the original palette of redwood and concrete block. Interestingly, we discovered during demolition that the house originally contained a polychromatic palette and two of Wright’s original colors for the interior were almost identical to the colors selected for the renovation.

In factoring the programmatic issues of light, space and scale together, hue and tone became extremely important, both in the need for exterior and interior colors to harmonize and in creating a distinctive identity for the interior spaces of this home. Wright painted each room a distinctive color. In the renovation, a different color was introduced on individual wall planes within each space to add a subtle rhythm to the interior. Millwork was originally predominantly redwood, with some walnut grain plastic laminate. In the renovation, walnut cabinetry was introduced to clearly yet subtly distinguish the new work from Wright’s original building fabric.

The house was conceived as one area within an overall site geometry and the exterior can be seen from all interior angles and spaces. Our new palette compliments the original finishes and reinforces the existing geometry, enhancing a rhythm that moves throughout the house and engages the landscape in a continuous spatial composition.

CATEGORY	INFORMATION
Project Type	Single-Family Residence
Location	La Cañada Flintridge, CA
Status	Completed July, 2007
Size	3,300 sq. feet

Friedman Residence

The original two-story structure, built in 1889 as a firehouse for horse-drawn equipment, was converted to residential use in the 1920s. Our renovation is conceived as a vertical procession from street to skyline: a transition from the restored 19th century façade up through a new two-story high dining room, and culminating with a contemporary third story indoor/outdoor living room and terrace, which merges the interior with the Manhattan horizon. The first floor consists of a single car garage and studio apartment with private garden; the second floor includes the dining room, kitchen, powder room, master suite and library; and the living room, semi-enclosed terrace with hot tub, and guest bedroom and bath are located on the third floor. An elevator links all three floors.

Major materials include limestone and dark-stained oak floors, cherry and dark-stained oak cabinetry, limestone, marble and stainless steel countertops, and bathroom sinks carved from solid blocks of marble. Bathroom walls are finished with either polished green or honed beige limestone slab and matte white subway tile. A third floor wall finished in brown back-painted glass runs from the living room bar to the semi-enclosed outdoor terrace. Exterior fascias and trim are finished in Nordic Brown copper. Third floor custom sliding doors, window, and guardrail trim are oiled mahogany.

CATEGORY	INFORMATION
Project Type	Single-Family Residence
Location	Long Island City, NY
Status	Completed 2006
Size	3,800 sq. feet

Freeman Jardini Studio

The program is a free-standing painting and drawing studio, distinctly contemporary but complementary to the existing historic shingle-style residence: the J.B. Merrill House by H.M. Patterson (1909), designated as an LA Historical-Cultural Monument. We positioned the studio to the edge of the property and set it into the slope of the site to maintain views of the site from the main house. A new courtyard links the studio with the existing deck. Together the sequence from house to deck to courtyard to breezeway to studio interior is a choreography of movement and space, seamlessly integrating site, topography, and horizon. A tectonic idea allows achievement of the site intentions: the thin, wing-like steel roof — a square folded upward along the diagonal — floats above the cave-like masonry enclosure, allowing transparency from house and deck through the studio clerestories, toward the landscape beyond. There is no active heating or cooling system; natural cross-ventilation, deep overhangs, lush site microclimate, and the thermal mass of walls, floor, and site keep the studio workspace comfortable year-round.

CATEGORY	INFORMATION
Project Type	Free-Standing Art Studio
Location	Mt. Washington, Los Angeles, CA
Status	Completed 2012
Size	400 sq. feet

Callow Residence

The clients expressed a desire for a house with a modest scale from the street, a fluid relationship between interior and exterior space, with privacy from adjacent neighbors, and a distinctive design conceptually situated on the trajectory of Los Angeles modernism. We organized the site into functional bands of varying widths running north-south, and overlaid a pattern of alternating angled walls and roof lines to shape space and direct view and movement from the site and through the house.

The site offers no obvious desirable views, so courtyards, a south-oriented deck, and a rear garden serve as focal points framing the sky, as well as tree canopies and the play of light wherever possible. The entire site is engaged in the architectural composition. The plan is bilaterally symmetrical with an upward spiral progression around the entry courtyard, leading to the upturned cantilevered roof. The angular and folding form language of the house reads alternately planar and volumetric.

We sought drama and intimacy, openness and privacy, movement and focus throughout the design.