\ The exterior fish pond, set off
\ Lit up at night, the house
to one side of the garden, is made from a salvaged produce trailer.
to Siegal, “he made it very, very clear from the beginning that the project would be about the client, not about the architect.” This meant that he wasn’t after an architectural statement, but a place that would be tailored to his needs. “I knew I wanted an uncluttered, minimalist space,” he explains, but in the end, “Jennifer came up with all the shapes.” She also gave the project a level of polish that belies its industrial roots as scrap metal and shipping containers. The house, which took three months to build and sits three feet above the ground on reclaimed earth, is a simple arrangement of steel-and-glass volumes. The central living space is separated from the garden by an expansive glass wall. The slanted roof is supported by two massive, inverted steel beams. The crossbeams are made of recycled Douglas fir from a local construction site (the bedecking for the ceilings is also recycled). The roof insulation, which Carlson helped to devise, circulates cool air via narrow shafts from the
44
City
resembles an exaggerated box lantern, glowing brightly at the end of the long garden path.
shady lower section of the roof up toward the exposed higher end. Siegal and OMD senior designer Kelly Bair sliced open, extended, and connected the shipping containers to form a unified house with a series of clearly designated functions. Each of the original trailers had its own architectural program. The master bedroom falls under the roof’s highest section, connected to a sky-lit bathroom. Underneath is a media room and library. On the opposite side of the house, the top container functions as an office and lounge while the bottom one houses mechanical units, a guest bathroom, and a laundry room. Translucent sliding doors of laminated glass separate the upper-level spaces. Carlson’s friend David Mocarski, principal of design firm Arkkit Forms and a professor at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, designed all the custom cabinetry and chose the interior colors throughout the house. The defining feature of the main living-kitchendining area is a waterfall by Rik Jones of Liquid
Works that supplies recycled water to an indoor fountain, home to a school of ornamental koi and Chinese carp. Carlson wanted it for climate control (he prefers a humid atmosphere to the typically dry desert air of downtown Los Angeles), but it also creates a visual anchor that pulls the house together. The pool, and its counterpart in the garden on the other side of the glass facade, are made from recycled produce trailers, also from Carlson’s yard. He had the wheels taken off and added layers of epoxy insulation before sinking it into the cherrywood floor of the living room. Carlson is a tidy man who travels a lot, so the place looks impeccably clean. The Zen simplicity of the interior forms a perfect complement to the ethic of practical yet beautiful sustainability that inspired the structure in the first place. “Everything was here already,” Carlson says. “What Jennifer and I did was figure out a way to lean it all together.”