Studio for a Painter

A young painter needed a per­sonal work­space that was closer to her home but would also fa­cil­i­tate the mak­ing of her multi-faceted pieces. Her new stu­dio, which is com­posed of three in­ter­sect­ing boxes, is nes­tled into the hill be­hind her house that rests above the Sil­ver Lake reser­voir.
Pro­gram­mat­i­cally the stu­dio needed to pro­vide a wide, open seg­ment of floor to place paint­ings and col­lages as she works on them and tall gen­er­ous ex­panses of wall to hang the paint­ings while they dry or dur­ing work in­ter­vals. In ad­di­tion it was pre­ferred that no di­rect light come into the work­spaces.
The re­sult is a three-part build­ing that con­sists of an of­fice space in the front, a paint­ing/​work­space in the cen­ter, and a sky­light rest­ing above the two. The sky­light box is es­sen­tially a clerestory that floats above the cen­tral work­space and the of­fice. This sky­light sys­tem and ex­posed wood ceil­ing pro­vides ex­ten­sive am­bi­ent nat­ural light while pre­vent­ing any di­rect light from falling on the walls. Light is mod­u­lated by a sus­pended shade sys­tem con­structed of re­cy­cled wood prod­uct.