Architecture, Interiors, Model Making & Furniture Design
New build | Concept design | Three-dimensional studies | Solar analysis
Designed by Lee Anchor at LA Architecture & Art, 2025
Two wings held apart by a pool courtyard — a house arranged so that almost every room looks across the water to the other side of itself.
[Your description of the Wilson Residence to go here — the brief, the site, and what you were after in the arrangement.]
The two wings face each other across the pool, glazed almost end to end, so the courtyard becomes the middle of the house rather than the space left over behind it. Adjustable louvre panels sit alongside the glazing, letting each face be opened to the breeze or closed down against weather and afternoon sun. A frameless glass balustrade keeps the pool edge legible without interrupting the view through.
From the street the house reads low and long: broad roof planes with deep eaves, dark walls set against pale paving, and planting held tight along the boundary. The carport sits under the same roof line, so the arrival is part of the building rather than an attachment to it.
The two wings and the courtyard between them
The model was used to test how the sun moves across the house through the year. The study below plots the sun path for 22 January — sunrise at 5.07am, midday overhead, sunset at 7.05pm — against the roof planes and the courtyard, so the depth of the eaves and the position of the louvres could be set against real angles rather than guessed at.
An earlier project for the same clients — a new external stair for their existing home — is shown at The Wilson Stair.
We explain the whys before we get to the hows.
A new house starts with pre-design, not with a plan. The point is to share what we know early — so that by the time the actual design begins, the issues and the opportunities are already understood by the client, and the decisions ahead of them are clear. Nothing is fixed in built form before that groundwork is done.
Pre-design considers three things: experience, knowledge and inspiration. In practice that means working through the site, the house room by room, and the materials — what you like, and just as usefully, what you don't.
It begins with a site visit, and everything found there feeds the concept design: the sun path, the prevailing breezes, noise sources, the views out and the views back in. Existing trees and vegetation, water run-off and drainage patterns, contour and slope, soil type, site access. Where the services run — water, sewerage, electricity, gas — and any easements crossing the land. Boundaries and fences, the street frontage, adjoining properties, major trees next door, and the difference in levels between this site and the ones beside it.
Some of it can only be seen at the right moment. Drainage patterns want a rainy day.
The brief is confirmed alongside the time frame, the scope and the budget — the budget being the whole of it, design and consultants as well as construction, since a number that leaves those out is not a number.
Climate-appropriate sustainability is designed in rather than added on. Done well it makes a house more comfortable and more affordable to run across its whole life, and the lower running costs are a hedge against future rises in energy and water prices. The solar study above is part of that thinking, not a separate exercise.