CAZA Breaks Open The Normative Box House With LA Hills
August 4, 2026
How does a design acknowledge context while also embracing innovation?
Nestled into the residential landscape of Chino Hills, LA Hills is a contemporary family home that finds common ground between traditional Asian aesthetics and classic American domestic architecture. The design embraces the traditional built landscape surrounding it, while also deviating to imprint personality and innovation on the canvas. Pitched roofs, familiar across both design schemes, allow the residence to naturally sit within the neighborhood while also offering a distinctly refined architectural presence. By drawing from authentic influences across Japan, Korea, and California, LA Hills is not an intrusive intervention in its landscape, but rather, a harmonious addition.
One tactic to innovate the project was employing complex geometries, both enhancing interest and maximizing perforation of light into the space. Rather than constructing a monolithic mass, the home is composed as a series of scaled, interlocking volumes whose shifting planes and varying heights invite Southern California light deep into the interior. The adjoining pitched roofs and timber bones open the space and emphasize verticality. Multiple skylights and double-height spaces further amplify this sense of openness, animating the home throughout the day with natural luminosity.
A Dialogue Between Timber and Light, an Exercise in Materiality
Built entirely from Cross-Laminated Timber, the residence celebrates its exposed structure as beams, shadows, and warm textures create a rhythm that travels throughout the home. The timber acts as a stage, inviting light to dance across its platform. The palette is completed by warm metallic accents in lighting features and earth tones that form a structural membrane peeking through the sleek wood skin. Brick shingles, sandstone, and wood battens further root the project in its context, mirroring the residential language across Chino Hills. Altogether, this gives LA Hills a sense of permanence, warmth, and cultural balance.
