Last January, we announced the Dwell Home II Design Invitational, with the aim of establishing a model for sustainable home building in the 21st century. Longtime Angeleno Glen Martin and his wife, Los Angeles native Claudia Plasencia, offered up their plot of land in Topanga Canyon as the test site. Escher GuneWardena Architecture was selected from a group of five architects to build the winning design: a 2,000-square-foot home with a budget of approximately $500,000 exclusive of land costs.

The elevations shown here illustrate one of the most critical (and basic) elements of the house and its goal of environmental friendliness—namely how the structure will relate to the site. Project architect, Bojana Boyansz describes this relationship in terms of the “three vertical layers of the house: the fly-ash concrete plinth, glass box middle, and heavy roof.” The vertical layers, she continues, “are a response to the site (steep and small), climate (hot), views (along the canyon), and the aesthetic and environmental challenge of making a glass box green.

“The house is set back from the street about 30 feet because of zoning requirements,” explains Boyansz, “which has pushed the structure up the hill to the south and 24.5 feet above street level. The plinth creates the flat pad on the steeply sloping ground between the rear of the house (uphill, south) and the front of the house (downhill, north) on which the living level sits. The glass box is born out of Glen and Claudia’s desire to take advantage of the views and their desire to create a feeling of openness for the family. The earth roof features large overhangs to protect the glass box from the hot climate and helps the structure blend into the surroundings.”

We will continue to follow the progress of the house leading up to its completion. In December we will highlight many of the materials to be used and their environmental qualities and the construction quandaries they present.