Contemporary Canal House by Sander Architects

Project Name: Canal House
Architect: Sander Architects
Architect homepage: www.sander-architects.com
Client: Architect’s own residence
Project Type: Single Family Residence
Design Team: Whitney Sander, Principal Architect
Contractor/s: Ruiz Brothers Construction
Date of commencement of project: 2002
Date of completion of project: 2003
Location of site: Venice, California, USA
Site Area: 2520 sq. ft.
Built-up Area: 2200 sq. ft.
Cost of Construction/Execution: $400000

According to the architect, This Contemporary Canal Home was designed based on two ideas, fashion and function, The house was designed by Los Angeles-based Sander Architects, the creative designer behind this contemporary home.

The Canal House is composed of three cubes: one raised at the street as a studio, two together at the canalside as the residence. In its concept and execution, the house is informed by two ideas, one embracing the possibility of the poetic, the other a more specific kind of material formation.

1. metaphor: In its separate masses, the house sets up an opposition between studio and residence: work/live, sky/earth, idea/body. An attempt is made to keep this discussion covert and nuanced rather than overt or obvious. The studio is a raised, pure space, marked by horizontal steel fins providing indirect light through three transparent walls.

The residence might be considered solidly grounded, mostly opaque, somewhat inward-looking. As the studio might further take on aspects of thought, connoted by simplicity and purity of form, the residence is all body; torqued, stepping, winding.

2. Tectonics: Within both volumes, surfaces have been folded, warped, wrapped, and while there are few interior walls per se, space is divided sufficiently, both horizontally and vertically, to allow place and hierarchy. A ‘pseudo’ mobius strip of 1″ sanded (horizontal) acrylic forms a divider / wall / handrail, which wraps around and through the upper house level, encircling the central atrium.

This starts as four ribbons, each 2′ tall, then becomes two (handrail), then one (guardrail fill), passing beneath itself at the origin. Stair treads are formed from folded 1/2″ steel plate, as is the fireplace mantle / facing / hearth. The kitchen island is cantilevered sheets of Wavecore Panelite, ‘folded’ into an ‘L’ section. Parachute nylon wraps the first floor living and dining areas.