Porch House is a concrete house built upon a small pad at the top of a sloping hillside. Expansive views of the Pacific Ocean from the main living space transform the occupant experience from indoors to outdoors, while the full south window wall opens to the deep balcony and breeze. While a standard house typology provides living space on the ground floor with private rooms above, the Porch House is reversed to maintain an unbroken progression from the street to the more public space, allowing the living room to expand vertically as well as horizontally.
Concrete volumes buffer the site from the street and enclose living and entertaining spaces. These are defined by a colonnade at the edge of the balcony, allowing the entire house function as a porch, an in-between space experienced most dramatically in the living room.
The sustainable approach to the Porch House considers the building an instrument operated by its occupants according to the seasons in Southern California (yes, there are really seasons, felt especially when so much of life is outdoors). Energy and sustainability are not simply treated as technical auxiliaries, but built into the architecture as essential features of the building design.
A high performance envelope, strategic siting, and careful massing create a responsive vessel for occupant comfort throughout the year. a hydronic radiant system serves as a backup during cooler winter months.
L+U served as the sustainability consultant for the project and provided thermal comfort analysis to help specify envelope features and design the HVAC strategies, shading studies to support photovoltaic panel location, and parametric analysis of glazing options and insulation needs.
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