Before the Eaton Fire, the clients spent a lot of time in the yard with their daughters and dog, following the shade of the deodar cedars, moving inside and out, dashing down to the half-basement and up to the shed. The house was small, but they lived across every inch of the site. 

From our first meeting, they knew they wanted to increase the size of their house (and add a second story at their daughters’ request!), add an ADU, and shield themselves from the busy streets out front. They were also very clear that they did not want to rebuild what was there before “like-for-like”, and instead were determined to create a “mountain escape” that had mid-century sensibilities tuned to a contemporary context.

Our design challenge, then, was to break down the mass and scale of all the added building volume to create a protected internal world where daily life could sprawl casually across the site. 

We relocated the home’s footprint from the back of the property to the limits of the front yard setback, creating a strong street presence that aligns with the context of Altadena. A modest single-story structure with a pitched roof conceals a two-story volume beyond, maintaining a neighborhood scale while creating layered domestic spaces.

Responding to the family’s desire for a connection to the landscape, the L-shaped primary residence and detached ADU frame a shared courtyard, placing the outdoors at the center of the project. The building forms and roof overhangs delineate a range of microclimates. 

The landscape is subtly regraded to allow stormwater to move naturally across the site and under a “bridge” that connects the main house’s kitchen to the two-story bedroom volume. The clients own a store that specializes in regionally appropriate plants, and they will gradually fill the site in with the things they love. 

The roof is a key expressive feature that also addresses climate and building performance. Formally, it provides generous shading to all of the openings, reducing solar heat gain. Its unvented metal assembly (with closed, cement board-clad soffits) stops wildfire embers from entering the house. Like the rest of the house, the roof has continuous exterior mineral wool insulation, so no spray foam or petroleum-based products are used. Within the insulated roof cavity, an HRV system is paired with ducted mini-splits to efficiently control climate and air quality. 

Inside, the pitched ceilings and skylight wells are clad with a canopy of wood milled from the property’s fire-damaged deodar cedars. Wood fin walls sit below the canopy’s interior soffit, holding it up and shaping unique thresholds to the neighborhood outside and the courtyard inside. The slab-on-grade foundation is revealed as an exposed concrete floor, which steps up and down to follow the site’s topography. 

With these gestures, we hope the home reflects the spirit of the site and the family.

Terrestrial Pursuits

Title 24 Guys

Terrestrial Pursuits + Client