When the original owners of the MuSh Residence approached Los Angeles-based architecture firm LAB+ (formerly Studio 0.10), they presented a complex wish list for a home that would integrate living, work, and entertainment areas. In addition to maximizing outdoor space, the couple requested offices, an art studio, an exhibition space to support the wife’s gallery business, and a separate apartment for the wife’s mother. “The planning and design strategies involved pushing, pulling, stacking, stretching, and wrapping the programs onto the site,” says principal architect Andrew Liang. “If you can imagine, it was a bit like trying to fit a few contortionists into a box—which became the overriding analogy driving the formal and spatial concept of the project.”

"It was a bit like trying to fit a few contortionists into a box." - Andrew Liang

The resulting residence is comprised of two zinc-clad structures separated by a courtyard. The unit toward the front of the narrow lot houses a four-car garage; a ground-floor apartment with its own kitchen, bedroom, and bathroom; and a second-floor art studio. Behind it, the main house contains living, dining, and kitchen areas on the ground floor, a home office and a guest room on the second floor, and a master suite on the third floor. Wrapping around the house, the stairwell doubles as a continuous gallery space that continues an emphasis on indoor/outdoor living. Since the home is bordered by a nursery on two sides, Liang was able to use the “borrowed greenery” to provide a sense of “living next to a patch of ever-changing nature.”

Now available for $3.5 million, the MuSh Residence is a thoughtful reimagining of the traditional abode. “The circulation that doubles as a continuous linear gallery space, stairways as ‘sit and contemplate’ spaces, [and] architecture that provokes a sense of voyeurism and is still able to be private are all aspects of the design that redefined the domestic functions of a house,” explains Liang. “Surely this is not a house for just anyone, but for the right owner willing to think and live simultaneously inside and outside of the box, this house will never be dull.”

For more information, visit the property’s website.

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