RESIDENCE FOR A BRIARD

Case Study House for the 21st Century?
Whitney Sander, principal architect and founder of the firm, has developed a way of creating residential buildings that is both very green and extremely efficient in terms of construction costs. He calls this Hybrid House: part prefab, all custom (tm) as each house is completely customized to each client.
Residence for a Briard is a 4,500sf house that is the first example of Hybrid House, the invention of Sander Architects, LLC. Its structural frames and exterior walls and roof are all prefabricated off-site by warehouse manufacturers and shipped to the site in pieces on one flat-bed truck. These pieces then bolt together like an erector set in three weeks time. Once the shell is complete all interior walls, systems and finishes are completed in a traditional manner. The resulting Hybrid House is therefore custom designed for the client, the site, and local codes, at a small fraction of standard construction cost. 

Equally important for a designer: the warehouse frames allow the scale of the interior spaces to be magnificent. Residence for a Briard has 28’ ceilings in the great room. The system is also very simple to erect – the general contractor had never worked with it before and he became an enthusiastic convert.
Designed for the President-Emeritus of the Architectural Foundation of Los Angeles, which promotes excellence in modern architecture in the greater Los Angeles area, this house needed to be of great design quality. One example of this is the dominant southern facade, which evolved during many hours of discussions of the arts and painting.
The facade derives from a painting of a violin by Braque ("Aria of Bach,' 1913). This was especially appropriate as the client is also a music critic. As such, he requested that the house be a place where string quartets could come and play for an audience. So we provided the house with a great room surrounded by a suspended balcony. The long side of this balcony is a shallow stairway with long treads that are wide enough for two chairs side-by-side facing the performance area below. Beyond this is a flat, large landing where additional chairs can be placed. The handrails for both these areas are transparent glass, with grasses laminated into the glass below eye level.
As well, the home makes extensive use of ecological/sustainable materials, systems and strategies, making this one of the greenest residences built in California to date. (See attached notes.)
We aimed to create an eco-friendly Case Study House for the 21st Century using construction strategies that radically reduce standard construction costs for custom homes. These strategies include the use of prefabricated structural frames and components, which allows for a construction cost far lower than competing fully-prefab modern homes.