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Project: Max House Location: Los Angeles, California Description: 8000 sq. ft. single-family house on a hillside site; reinforced concrete Client: Leon Max and Ame Austin The Max house is an 8000 sq. ft. house designed for fashion designers Leon Max and Ame Austin for a hillside site in Los Angeles. Having previously lived in a Greene & Greene house, a Neutra house and Starck's Mondrian Hotel for an extended period, Max had few but far reaching stipulations for his new home. The project should resemble a cylinder projecting from the hillside and it should be made primarily out of cast-in-place concrete. The resulting project is an attempt to reconcile the unforgiving geometry stipulated by the client with the domestic program in a way that exploits the drama of the project's steep, hillside site. The response was to explore the full range of characteristics of the material concrete and to deploy this material, through the "ideal" geometry of the cylinder, toward the creation of a house as "gauge" or measuring device of nature. |