House 5 by LADG explores Los Angeles’ suburban typologies
House 5 by architecture studio The Los Angeles Design Group (LADG) offers a contemporary alternative to the city's suburban homes

Receive our daily digest of inspiration, escapism and design stories from around the world direct to your inbox
Thank you for signing up to Wallpaper. You will receive a verification email shortly.
There was a problem. Please refresh the page and try again.
House 5 is a creative reimagining of an existing Los Angeles house in the city's Larchmont Village neighborhood. The project, by Venice, CA, and Cambridge, MA-based firm The Los Angeles Design Group (LADG), aims to playfully reinterpret the traditional tropes of LA suburbia, challenging internal and external arrangements for a young family after their forever home.
House 5 by LADG
The architects began their refresh by cutting through the existing layout and building fabric to create two new concrete footpaths and four unique quadrants that define the home's new arrangement.
'House in Los Angeles 5 gently starts to chip away at the identification of the single-family home with certain conservative notions of architecture and the family,' says LADG co-principal Andrew Holder. 'The way we started this project is by splitting those organisational tropes with perpendicular cuts.'
The new home was born out of an existing 1929 bungalow, originally containing two bedrooms, and two bathrooms within 1,426 sq ft. Now, an additional 574 sq ft, including a bedroom, a half bathroom, a laundry room and a pantry, have significantly expanded the domestic space.
Bold geometries and blocky volumes in light colours – white plaster and light-coloured, natural or painted wood – create a subtly dramatic but welcoming and engaging interior. At the home's heart is an expansive communal 'core' of flexible, open space – around it feature the family's living spaces, dining area and a kitchen.
'The aim is to evacuate the centre of the house and put a cultural proposition in its place – a new way to think about how and where to come together as a family. Here, we are taking out the hearth and replacing it with air, as an abstract idea and quite literally as a means to achieve a passively cooled interior climate,' explained LADG co-principal Benjamin Freyinger.
These key internal gestures are translated outside into the building's large wedge-shaped roofs – the outlines of which were carefully calculated to respond to the neighbourhood's scale and typologies, maintaining light, views and airflow between adjacent structures, as Holder added: 'We’re interested in showing an alternate model but we are being good neighbours.'
Wallpaper* Newsletter
Receive our daily digest of inspiration, escapism and design stories from around the world direct to your inbox
Ellie Stathaki is the Architecture Editor at Wallpaper*. She trained as an architect at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in Greece and studied architectural history at the Bartlett in London. Now an established journalist, she has been a member of the Wallpaper* team since 2006, visiting buildings across the globe and interviewing leading architects such as Tadao Ando and Rem Koolhaas. Ellie has also taken part in judging panels, moderated events, curated shows and contributed in books, such as The Contemporary House (Thames & Hudson, 2018) and Glenn Sestig Architecture Diary (2020).
-
When Doshi Levien met Giulio Cappellini
Designers Nipa Doshi and Jonathan Levien look back on their collaboration with design visionary Giulio Cappellini, Guest Editor of the Wallpaper* October 2023 issue
By Rosa Bertoli Published
-
We spend the night at The Peninsula London
We spend a night at The Peninsula London, which raises the bar for the premier Asian hospitality specialist
By Lauren Ho Published
-
Marina Abramović at the Royal Academy: trauma to transcendence
Marina Abramović at the Royal Academy of Arts in London is a solo show spanning five decades of practice. Amah-Rose Abrams reports
By Amah-Rose Abrams Published
-
Look inside Sixth&Blanco, Herzog & de Meuron’s first project in Texas
Step inside Sixth&Blanco by Herzog & de Meuron, as the Swiss studio reveals interior images of its first ever Texas design, a forward-thinking, sustainable and mixed-use scheme
By Ellie Stathaki Published
-
Madrone Ridge in California is conceived as habitat for both humans and nature
Madrone Ridge by Field Architecture, set in California’s Sonoma Valley, was designed to deepen its owners' relationship with nature
By Ellie Stathaki Published
-
Slot Canyon Residence balances openness and seclusion in Palm Springs
Slot Canyon Residence by RIOS, set in the Las Palmas neighbourhood of Palm Springs, strikes a balance between openness and seclusion
By Ellie Stathaki Published
-
'Emerging Ecologies' at MoMA explores the history of the 'green’ movement
'Emerging Ecologies' opens at MoMA in New York, curated by Ambasz Institute director Carson Chan and seeking the meaning of building 'green'
By Beatrice Galilee Published
-
This Miami office is a workspace filled with rawness and texture
A new Miami office by designer Clive Lonstein balances the warmth and texture of nature with modern workspace
By Ellie Stathaki Published
-
Bed-Stuy townhouse renovation elevates historic home through contemporary minimalism
Bed-Stuy townhouse renovation by Also Office with Colony brings together past and present through gentle design gestures and strategic redesigns
By Ellie Stathaki Published
-
Discover Diller Scofidio + Renfro’s Blue Dream house in the Hamptons
A new monograph captures Blue Dream house and the lengthy design and construction process of a quintessential example of contemporary Hamptons architecture
By Jonathan Bell Published
-
2023 Obel Award celebrates Kate Orff’s ecosystem-driven designs
Scape and its founder Kate Orff have scooped the 2023 Obel Award, which celebrates the landscape studio’s Living Breakwaters project
By Ellie Stathaki Published