Rinconia Drive, Hollywood, CA.

You never really know who buys your houses.

The Hollywood Reservoir  (Lake Hollywood) is situated above the center of Hollywood.  Below this reservoir is a residential area, quite densely developed with an eclectic mix of homes built over the last 100 years.  Rinconia Drive is at the top of the community and directly below and adjacent to the reservoir.  The site has astounding views across the Hollywood and downtown Los Angeles areas.  Our client, a new developer, had secured the site for the creation of a new hillside home.  The site is steep in the extreme.  Our strategy for the development of the site, was to separate the home from the garage, thereby allowing us greater height from the street and access to the sweeping views, and a greater sense of seclusion and privacy from the adjacent street.  The garage has within it an elevator providing easy access to the home above.  The home is a meditation on cubic massing and material development in a four story volume.  The elevator has three landing levels , one at the garage, one at the roof of the garage( the effective yard), and one at a bridge located at the ground floor level of the home.  The lowest level of the home is for 2 bedrooms and the entry.  Directly above this is the living room level which is entirely open and has a mezzanine open to it.   Above the mezzanine is the master suite, a total of 6 developed levels.  This is hillside living in the extreme.  The house was made somewhat notorious by having been purchased by Rap artist Chris Brown, who proceeded to modify the home to his liking, including adding significant amounts of street art on both the exterior and interior walls. His controversial ownership ended when he sold the home to a highly respected Los Angles based copyright attorney and her husband.  They have proceeded to renovate the home and bring back much of the original look of the interior of the home while preserving the best of the interior street art that Chris Brown and his arts community produced.