Solar umbrella: Lawrence Scarpa's own family house in Venice Beach is an imaginative and ecologically aware response to the balmy Californian climate.Frugality and sustainability are the hallmarks of Pugh + Scarpa's practice, and Lawrence Scarpa's family house is an imaginative manifestation of those principles. Despite its imposing facade, it is an addition: a spacious living area grafted onto the rear of a vintage 60sqm bungalow, and an upstairs master suite cantilevered back without touching the roof of the old building, so avoiding the need to bring the old structure up to code. A tilt-up concrete shear wall shear wall In building construction, a rigid vertical diaphragm capable of transferring lateral forces from exterior walls, floors, and roofs to the ground foundation in a direction parallel to their planes. Examples are the reinforced-concrete wall or vertical truss. braces a wood-frame structure, and a steel frame supports the cantilever. All the other materials are recycled: rusted cold-rolled steel for the front fence and surface cladding, cherry wood and chipboard chip·board n. A pasteboard made from discarded paper. chipboard Noun thin rigid board made of compressed wood particles Noun 1. , homosote (pulped newsprint) and a translucent screen of plastic pellets used to clean up oil spills This is a list of oil spills throughout the world. Large Oil Spills to Date Oil Spills of over 100,000 tonnes or 30 million US gallons, ordered by Tonnes Spill / Tanker Location Date *Tons of crude oil link . [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Ninety solar panels wrap the south side and canopy the bedroom terrace, blocking the sun and generating an energy credit. The house is cooled by cross ventilation, and all rainwater is retained on site. A narrow, wedge-shaped lantern rises above the kitchen, pulling in natural light (warmed by its purple acrylic lining) and doubling as a heat chimney when the skylight is opened. Pocketing glass sliders sliders a species of tortoise kept as pets. They have a black shell and a red stripe behind the eye. Called also Chrysemys scripta elegans, red-eared sliders. open the living room to the front, and the master bedroom opens to a terrace, bringing the outdoors in. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] The notion of indoor-outdoor living in southern California Southern California, also colloquially known as SoCal, is the southern portion of the U.S. state of California. Centered on the cities of Los Angeles and San Diego, Southern California is home to nearly 24 million people and is the nation's second most populated region, was pioneered by immigrants from cold climates, such as the Greene brothers of Cincinnati and Schindler and Neutra from Vienna. Scarpa had the opposite experience: 'I grew up in Florida, where it is miserably hot and humid, and you get sweaty walking from your house to the car. The ocean breezes in Venice make this the best climate on the planet, and it's a crime not to take advantage of it. Green architecture is an easy, commonsense thing to do--we have an in-house electrical/mechanical engineer and typically make our buildings 50 per cent more energy efficient than more conventional solutions.' Like many architects, Scarpa launched his practice with kitchen remodels and residential additions and, when he and his wife moved into a run-down 1923 cottage on a through lot, they did an inexpensive remodel re·mod·el tr.v. re·mod·eled also re·mod·elled, re·mod·el·ing also re·mod·el·ling, re·mod·els also re·mod·els To make over in structure or style; reconstruct. for themselves. The long back yard prompted thoughts of expansion and the arrival of their first child, five years ago, made that dream a necessity. The 130sqm addition was done on a tight budget within a restrictive zoning envelope. It was important not to overwhelm the cottages on either side, so the steel fence reduces the impact of the two-storey structure. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] From the front you can look through the house to the street on the far side, and glimpse treetops through the glass in the bedroom. Openness and transparency dematerialise Verb 1. dematerialise - become immaterial; disappear dematerialize disappear, vanish, go away - become invisible or unnoticeable; "The effect vanished when day broke" the gritty steel and concrete, and a brise-soleil of bristles filters the light. Scarpa calls it the world's largest scrubbing brush. The original facade (now the rear) has been abstracted. A steel-framed glass box pushes forward beneath an open steel canopy, and the same material is employed for the car port and entry door. Leaves from a eucalyptus, planted by the architect five years before and sacrificed for the addition, were laid in the concrete forms and pattern the surface of the wall beside the entry. A low wall that surrounds the plunge pool serves as a bench for entertaining, as does the edge of the sunken living room. Almost everything in this inventive house does double duty. The entry to a guest bathroom and lavatory is concealed behind a hinged section of the bookcase bookcase Piece of furniture fitted with shelves, formerly often enclosed by doors. In early times the ambry, or wall cupboard, was used to hold books. Bookcases were included in the medieval fittings of college libraries in Britain. that lines one wall. Concrete steps with a cantilevered handrail lead to a springy spring·y adj. spring·i·er, spring·i·est 1. Marked by resilience; elastic. 2. Abounding in freshwater springs. spring mesh staircase supported on a steel tube of the same rusted steel, which runs up the inner wall, hovering over a massive built-in sofa. The interior is a collage of textures and tones, from the patinated steel panels around the hearth to the soft suede finish of the homosote. A storage wall of grey-green mdf is a backdrop for the parents' bed, which opens onto an unenclosed bathing area. Though very different from its neighbours, the house has a strong sense of place. Venice, conceived a century ago as a picturesque pastiche pastiche (păstēsh`, pä–), work of art that combines themes and styles from various sources in such a way as to appear obviously derivative. of La Serenissima, became a tough, blue collar neighbourhood, known more for oil, bikers, and the Beats, than for its few surviving canals. Crime and gentrification gentrification, the rehabilitation and settlement of decaying urban areas by middle- and high-income people. Beginning in the 1970s and 80s, higher-income professionals, drawn by low-cost housing and easier access to downtown business areas, renovated deteriorating co-exist in one of the few districts of West LA that has not succumbed to the suffocating suf·fo·cate v. suf·fo·cat·ed, suf·fo·cat·ing, suf·fo·cates v.tr. 1. To kill or destroy by preventing access of air or oxygen. 2. To impair the respiration of; asphyxiate. 3. quest for respectability, and vigilante vigilante n. someone who takes the law into his/her own hands by trying and/or punishing another person without any legal authority. In the 1800s groups of vigilantes dispensed "frontier justice" by holding trials of accused horse-thieves, rustlers and shooters, and committees intent on imposing a sterile conformity of taste. Venice is getting pricey but it retains its edge, and Scarpa has made an important contribution to its diversity. 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