The project is the remodeling of and addition to a rare surviving specimen of a Sun Villa by architect A. Quincy Jones, which - in Jones’ words - was designed to be a “good, contemporary, low-cost” model home, and won the Builder House of the Year AIA Award in 1950.
In the middle of an affordability crisis in Southern California, our project aims to demonstrate that it is possible to refurbish sensitively and affordably, taking clues from the ethos of the Sun Villa.
A key strategy of the original design was the small ratio of interior building footprint to usable living space, achieved by incorporating hardscaped patios, courtyards and exterior storage areas into the site plan. Similarly, our client’s request for an additional bedroom, powder room and studio space were accomplished by reconfiguring the existing, 970 sf house with a single, central hallway opened to the rear yard, and by adding a 160sf multi-purpose building sited within the existing interior courtyard.
To keep the architectural integrity of the A. Quincy Jones design, as well as minimize costs, we used a light touch for the renovation with the main goal of eliminating elements added to the building by previous owners that obscured the original concept: functional elements doubling as architectural ones, without added finishes.
This included the removal of the terra-cotta tile covering the original concrete floor, and the replacement of the douglas fir plywood paneling that proffered a sense of fluid transition between interior and exterior, but was painted over. Replacement materials were used as much as possible in their unaltered state. Iconic features such as the exposed post and beam structure, indoor-outdoor trellises, as well as the thin profile of the roof were maintained through the ingenuous detailing of any added improvements, while allowing the building to provide contemporary standards of living.