In Los Angeles, an Architectural Home in the Hollywood Hills Lists for First Time for Nearly $2.3 million

About 30 years ago, architects Sarah Graham and Marc Angelil looked at a steep hill in Los Angeles—considered unbuildable—and decided to put their house there.

Dubbed the Experimental House, the two-bedroom, two-bathroom Hollywood Hills home is set to hit the market Thursday for the first time for nearly $2.3 million, Mansion Global has learned. Greg Holcomb and Tim Durkovic of Douglas Elliman have the listing.

The residence was designed as one continuous space and to maximize indoor-outdoor living, as well as for soaking in every last drop of sunshine. That meant getting creative with the roof.

“We completely dislocated the roof from the vertical walls,” said Ms. Graham, a partner at the Los Angeles- and Zurich-based architecture firm AGPS. “Picture a lid that is floating above the box—it’s held into place by steel beams that are pinned into the front wall and tension cables hold the roof in balance.”

She and Mr. Angélil, a senior advisor at the same firm, then added continuous glazing around the top to accentuate the space between the walls and the roof.

“It also importantly brings in the last rays of sunlight in this steep hillside landscape,” Ms. Graham said.

They used industrial-grade materials throughout, and did not disguise them, she added.

“It was not about surface materials; it was really about the tectonics of making it,” Ms Graham said. “So, plywood is the siding. We used particle board as a finish flooring. We put it in a vertical garage door in the dining room. It’s a kind of play of light and construction and minimalness.”

Another feature of the property is a studio that’s separate from the main part of the home, with its own entrance, according to the listing. It could also serve as an office.

When the home was completed in 1994, it won several awards, including recognition from the California Council and the Los Angeles Chapter of the American Institute of Architecture.

“[They] really paid attention to the mathematics of traditional architecture and there is a nobility…to the house,” Mr Holcomb said. “The more time you spend there, you really see how the relationship with the space begins to develop. The light is changing throughout the day; the air flow changes. You’re really interacting with the outdoors.”

Ms Graham noted that the light in the home makes it “almost like living in a beach house, except we don’t have a beach.” They are selling now because they don’t spend enough time there and “we believe houses should be lived in,” she said.

“In other ways, it’s very much like an urban loft,” Mr. Holcomb added during the same interview. “Yet you have this complete juxtaposition because it’s not in either location. It’s up in the woodsy, Hollywood Hills.”