Located just 2 blocks north of the Los Angeles International Airport, the Casa Vertical is a single-occupancy dwelling that was proposed as a feasibility study for a divorced and recently retired aeronautical engineer.

Unlike its neighbors, which shun their proximity to the airport and its noise by taking refuge behind the nearby sound barrier, the Casa Vertical reaches upward from its relatively small footprint to the maximum allowable building height, providing ample views of the nearby runway and retaining an unusually large percentage of its lot as landscaped outdoor space. This strategy was guided by the need to reconcile the client’s two primary and seemingly incompatible desires: he wanted his new house to be elevated enough to take full advantage of the views of the airport, however he also wanted the entirety of his house to remain completely accessible to him as he grew older and less willing or capable of using stairs.

Taking these two criteria into account, the design proposed a single 17’x23’ floor plate that could be raised and lowered hydraulically within a 32’ tall enclosure.

All programmatic elements such as the kitchen, shower, lavatory, bed, closet space, laundry equipment, and the like were stripped of their own dedicated floor space and packed neatly into one wall of the enclosure. By moving the floor up and down alongside this vertical service wall it was able to be continuously re-programmed to become the “kitchen,” or “bedroom,” or “bathroom,” or whatever. Consequently, the program distribution was not driven by the same logic of adjacencies that typically governs domestic space, since each program element is sufficiently adjacent to any other, regardless of any elevational difference.

Additionally, by consolidating all programmatic elements into one highly visible vertical surface to be variously deployed upon an open stage, the Casa Vertical served to put the daily activities of life on display. As a consequence, the domicile is revealed as a highly fluid and interlaced space, which is in turn dramatized and celebrated by the architecture. The increased accessibility afforded by the hydraulic elevator is therefore incidental to its ability to transform the act of inhabiting a space into something extraordinary and remarkable.