Venice House by Steven Ehrlich

Yesterday I just watched another interesting HGTV show called Top 10 Outdoor spaces. The space that brought the title home was really amazing. It’s an house in Venice, California, designed by Steven Ehrlich in 2003. It’s referred to as 700 Palms Residence in his online portfolio.

Big Tree and living room

Just an amazing space that uses the outdoor to extend the indoor space. As the designers put it in the HGTV show, what’s nice about California is that the outdoor square footage count just as much as the indoor square footage. So a 1500 square foot house can be extended to a 15,000 square foot mansion, simply by using the outdoor space well. This house is definitively a great example of how to do this well.

Bedroom and balcony
Pool and Kitchen

Here are a couple more photos I managed to find around on the web. I wish we could use the outdoor spaces like that in Canada, but with 6 months of winter a year, we would need to rethink the design a little bit. It’s still do-able though.

Stairs and living room
Pool and living room

A house in Wychwood Park, Toronto

Wychwood 2

I came across this amazing house while browsing my 2008 Autumn issue of International Architecture and Design. This house was designed by Toronto architect Ian McDonald in 2002 and was awarded the 2008 Governor General’s Medals in Architecture. Simply stunning!

Wychwood 1

Comment from the Jury

This house gives the split-level bungalow type a whole new meaning. The strategy seems to erode and intertwine the domestic structure of street frontage, back yard and neighbouring setbacks within the modest volume of a vintage bungalow, where spaces are brilliantly mined from the site rather than added to the structure. The result is a sequence of compact indoor and outdoor “rooms” that unexpectedly unravel into exquisite grand moments of expansion.

Wychwood 3

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