In Los Angeles, a Midcentury Homage Is Capped With a "Floating Roof"

Film director Will Gluck cites a few reasons why he loves his new home: A view spans from the San Fernando Valley to the San Gabriel Mountains, there’s a sense of quiet while still being close to the bustle of Downtown Los Angeles, and comfortable, open interiors make for quality family time. Most of all, however, he loves that he’s "living inside his father’s imagination."

Designed by his dad, Peter Gluck of architecture firm GLUCK+, Will’s family home is an updated take on the Case Study Houses, a series of home designs sponsored by Arts & Architecture magazine and built predominantly in L.A. to accommodate the post-World War II housing boom. Those homes, designed by midcentury starchitects like Richard Neutra and Pierre Koenig and built of glass, wood, and steel, were strikingly modern for the times. But they were also built to accommodate a glut of homebuyers, which means they were compact and short on sustainable tenets.

Gluck’s design of his son’s home carries the same clean-boned, midcentury aesthetic, but is updated to be more sustainable and to enhance creature comforts. The lower level of the home is built into the hillside and is topped with soil nine inches deep to provide ample insulation to the interiors. Peter notes that the lower level also receives a substantial boost in natural heating and cooling from being "earth-sheltered" by the side of the mountain. Its foot-thick concrete wall also helps, eliminating air leakage and moderating interior temperature swings.