The Rear Window House, designed by faculty member Ed Ogosta, AIA, has been awarded a 2018 AIA National Small Project Award. The Small Project Awards recognize practitioners for their high quality work and promote excellence in small project design. The program strives to raise public awareness of the value and design excellence that architects bring to projects regardless of size and scope. The jury remarked that, “This project demonstrates how a thoughtful, strategic intervention can breathe new life into an older home and be good for the neighborhood, without sacrificing the needs of the contemporary family.”
Located in Culver City, the project is a modern addition and complete interior renovation for an existing 1944 bungalow. The addition strengthens the connection between old and new by maintaining the 3:12 prevailing roof slope of the existing house, and by being entirely skinned in asphalt roofing shingles, which anchors the addition to the area’s vernacular materiality while projecting a uniquely contemporary identity. The project culminates in the master bedroom’s expansive rear window, formed of aluminum-clad plate steel, which cantilevers above a quietly bubbling pool of water.
The jury for the 2018 Small Project Awards was comprised of chair Carolyn Adams, AIA, of Carolyn Adams Architect in Seattle; Michael Antenora, AIA, of Antenora Architects in Austin, Texas; Steve Kordalski, AIA, of Kordalski Architects in Cleveland; Brandon Frazier Pace, AIA, of Sanders Pace Architecture in Knoxville, Tenn.; and Elizabeth Whittaker, AIA, of Merge Architects in Boston.