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GUTHRIE + BURESH

Workhouse

West Hollywood CA

The WorkHouse employs the changing perception of position, space, form and material as the primary elements in a flexural composition.

Posision I: site

(Before the most recent General Plan the street was zoned for artist live/work housing. It is now two unit housing- no businesses. 50% of the buildings are used as offices. A neighborhood assosciation vigilantly discourages change- of any kind).

Two individual WorkHouses are to be located on a single 40ft x 136ft lot in an area in west Hollywood bordered by an array of differently formed and occupied buildings and accessed by a busy commuter boulevard. Just prior to beginning the WorkHouse we contributed to re: American Dream a collection of proposals for increasing the housing density in Los Angeles. In that proposal we imagined a city fabric comprised of three distinct street types; Hybrid, Private and Open which were defined by the current use of the street and multiple combinations and densities of living and working spaces. WorkHouse began by implementing the strategy of the Hybrid Street whereby the noise and activity from the boulevard is buffered by positioning a smaller WorkHouse at the front while the rear of the lot becomes the site of the larger WorkHouse. The project is being constructed in two phases the first of which is now complete.

Descriptive Space/Form

(Maison Ozenfant's studio, the way the interior of the Schindler House extends into the garden, the membrane of the Eames House, and the simple space and form of the Danziger Studio.)

The WorkHouse utilizes a reductive formal vocabulary challenged through a perceptually complex composition of space and form. The development of contained exterior space and its extension to the interior was studied through a series of axonometric drawings and partial models. Employing the elements of space and shape in conjunction with the material and light studies established a spatial fabric of interlocking orthagonally formed spaces in simultaneous and multiple containment and release. The spatial procession of the section both horizontally through the site and vertically through the building is visualized in the series of diagrammatic sections and imbedded in the materials and construction of the building. There is a effort to form overlapping intermediate spaces between; interior spaces, interior and exterior spaces, the two WorkHouses and adjacent structures.

Position II: Script

( The area was initially developed for housing the domestic workers of nearby Beverly Hills. A rail line formerly passed through the rear yard setback.)

The productive and domestic program of the WorkHouse occupies the given space as a result of the site Position I and Descriptive Space/Form studies. Breaches in the normative spatial and boundary distinctions between the collective and the individual in general and working and living in particular are forged via strategic positioning of the script and the perceptual potential of the materials selected. Friction occurs when site and script positioning are unsympathetic relative to one another and is revealed/resolved through material choice as in the deployment of opaque plywood sheeting of the interior slipping behind the translucent membrane at the studio.

Perceptual Space/Form

(The Hollywood sign had a caretaker whose cabin was situated directly behind the sign with a view of the Los Angeles basin framed by the first "O".)

Visually shared space between adjacent buildings challenges the expected psychological opacity of the property line while the translucent membrane of the side elevations preserves the necessary privacy. This collective exchange takes place deep into this suburban lot and acts as a kind of optical piazza. Ocular transgression proceeds to the interior where sectional shifts and vari-ous screening devices comprise the necessary distance between spaces for work and House and concludes at the uppermost part of the WorkHouse where the mez-zanine shower, through a window to the street, reintroduces the most private of spaces to the public way. The staggered floors allow for a duplex optical projection into adjacent spaces-simultaneously deep/shallow, up/down and horizontally out- only at the view from the studio to the street.

Material

(It is never dark and there are no stars in Los Angeles.)

Materials were deployed for their experiential characteristics and ability to contribute to the muliple spatial understanding of the project. While the visual properties of opacity and transparence are understood and certain, translucency occupies the curious territory between the two, where spatial boundary or extension are in a state of continuous flux dependent upon the condition of the light at the moment and the position of the observer.