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La Jolla Guest House

Situated on a lot with an existing spec-house, this cast-in-place concrete Guest House serves as a pool pavilion and guest quarters. Its simple form and basic materials – concrete and wood – juxtapose with and complement the main house.

A floating concrete stair and a series of retaining walls link the main house with the guest house and adjacent pool deck, which are situated several feet below the existing house. In the process of creating this new connection, a rock ledge was exposed to form an organic edge to the concrete pool deck. Other concrete elements include an outdoor kitchen counter, concrete table, fire pits, and retaining walls that double as benches.

The form of the Guest House is conceived as two concrete “boxes” linked by a slatted wood roof and trellis. The concrete boxes contain a bedroom and bathroom on the east and a mudroom, laundry and bathroom on the west. They frame a large open space that houses a living area, dining table and kitchenette. Glazed pocket doors on the north and south facades frame views to the landscape and allow the space to be opened entirely to the outdoors, connecting the guest house to the pool deck and a terraced patio carved into the slope of the site.

The board-formed concrete walls of the Guest House are tinted to correlate with the warm stucco of the existing main house. The inverted hipped roof is a nod to the hipped roofs of the main house, and its low profile minimizes its visual impact on the site. The slatted wood ceiling extends out to form a continuous trellis to the south, under which is housed an outdoor kitchen and lounge with fireplace. A matching wood trellis, installed at a new concrete patio adjacent to the main house, completes a continuous sequence of outdoor spaces.