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New York studio Leong Leong has renovated a 1970s ranch house in Los Angeles, adding a large wall, outdoor space and a second floor clad in polycarbonate panels.
Completed in 2023 in Los Angeles’ Hancock Park neighborhood, the 6,000-square-foot (558-square-meter) Inverse House blends a domestic setting with institutional programming and a social gathering place.
The 13,534-square-foot (1,257-square-meter) lot is located at the end of a cul-de-sac and is fenced off, providing privacy with sweeping trees in one of the city’s oldest and best-preserved neighborhoods. Grand homes in Spanish Revival and English Tudor styles line the streets.
Due to local historic preservation guidelines, the team renovated only 50% of the existing house. The team chose to reorient the entrance around the rear wall, modifying the suburban typology and connecting to the Southern California climate through courtyards, pool areas and rock gardens.
Co-founder Dominic Leong told Dezeen: “We were inspired by the client’s desire to rethink clichés of contemporary domestic living and create a home that coexists with but is not overwhelmed by art.”
“Rather than erasing the DNA of the existing ranch-style house, we were more interested in transforming it into an energy-efficient suburban sanctuary that offered different areas for different aspects of the family’s lifestyle.”
The team added a continuous wall that inverts the relationship between interior and exterior, old and new, public and private in the house, which is intended to be “a tranquil indoor-outdoor suburban sanctuary for living alongside art.”
The wall on the south side of the house is angled, with a set of steps leading to the entrance courtyard. The wall on the north side forms a semicircle, separating the rock garden from the pool.
Leong Leong also added a second level above the kitchen, which houses a dedicated games room and is topped with a roof deck offering skyline views. In addition, the team added a 24-kilowatt Tesla solar rooftop array to power the home, making it a net-zero energy structure.
“Our approach is also influenced by artists such as Dan Graham and Mike Kelly, whose work explores how suburban architecture shapes our social experience and the complexities behind its traditional appearance,” said the team.
“We found that embracing the tension between historic preservation guidelines, the family’s non-traditional lifestyle and reducing environmental impact was just as beneficial as trying to find the perfect fit.”
“Indeed, the fusion of these elements inspires a magic that makes the house both contemporary and contextual, familiar and unexpected.”
The design features a palette of vernacular materials, including sand-coloured stucco walls, precast concrete and a large translucent polycarbonate second-story facade. The team also experimented with off-the-shelf products for various uses.
For example, muted peach tiles run throughout the floor, transitioning in the kitchen to Forbo, a rubber flooring material that wraps the stairs, counters, backsplash and children’s room walls.
“This material embodies Hancock Park House’s play between austerity and softness,” said Liang.
Wrapped in anodized aluminum profiles, the media room floats like an object in the center of the floor plan, doubling as a black box screening room and family room.
In addition to selecting sustainable materials, all gas appliances were replaced with purely electric units.
In order to reduce water consumption, the landscape adopts drought-tolerant “dryland landscaping”. A plant-free rock garden replaces grass with locally sourced boulders, and drought-tolerant plants such as aloe, spurge and acacia are irrigated by a weather-sensing HydroWise drip irrigation system.
Led by Chris and Dominic Leong, the studio recently completed the LGBT+ Center’s Hollywood campus in collaboration with Killefer Flammang Architects (KFA), as well as a permanent store for online fashion brand Everlane in Soho, Manhattan.
Photography is by Naho Kubota and Angela Howe.
Project credits:
Design Architect: Liang
Executive Architect: Liang Architects
Lighting Design: Liang
Interior design: Liang
contractor: Uhlers Construction Company
civil Engineering: deline engineering corp.
structure: working point
Landscape/Hardscape/Pool Design: Leong Leong in collaboration with Johnston Vidal Projects
Landscape/Hardscape Contractor: Johnston Vidal Project
Pool and water feature contractors: Johnston Vidal Project
Theater Contractor: great theater
Kitchen cabinets: brintop
Solar battery: Tesla Energy
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