A primary task for architecture is to geometrically and visually negotiate the internal order of a building with the parameters of its site. The Horizon House was designed to be a geometrically precise transformation of a generic 1960s ranch house into an optical device for framing panoramic views of the Pacific horizon in western Malibu, California. The existing house was comprised of two wings on a hillside site overlooking the ocean: a bedroom wing facing approximately southeast, and a garage wing almost due southwest. Unfortunately, the central node of the house, where the two wings met in closest proximity to the ocean, lacked unobstructed ocean views, social space for large gatherings and concerts, and limited outdoor amenities. The clients, a couple of internationally recognized classical musicians, wanted the design to reconcile the two wings, negotiating two axes of a grid with a third axis, and thereby uniting the two halves of the house to reframe the horizon.

Given planning constraints regulated by the City of Malibu, the project was limited to a maximum addition of 1000 sf, a maximum allowable change to only 50% of the exterior facades, and only a few feet could be added above the existing height. Nonetheless, the clients wanted a house that would be experienced as entirely new, not an existing house and a separate new addition. This created the architectural need to leverage the geometric order of the existing house toward a surgical addition that would allow the house to transition in form and scale from the massing of a traditional ranch on the north façade, facing the driveway, to an abstract, geometric viewing device on the south elevation that could be open to the natural environment. A reinforced, sand-finished concrete floor was introduced that would tie together the disparate spaces, indoors and out, while approximating an artificial beach several hundred feet above the ocean. The project's unusual grid, resulting from the reconciliation of the existing house's orientation with a true east-west grid, was designed to be saw-cut into the reinforced concrete floor.

The existing ranch house ceiling was removed and its roof bisected, reconstructed in steel, lifted, and reoriented due south. These new roof planes refocus the view to the Pacific Horizon, transforming perspectives outside of and within the house. Deep skylights bring light into various spaces and they animate the roofscape as an archipelago when viewing the house from the top of the driveway looking out toward the Pacific horizon. Motorized operable skylights and clerestory windows enable passive ventilation throughout the house. The large, chamfered southern addition to the project allows for a new pool to be oriented east-west for maximum ocean and daylight exposure along the south-facing Malibu coastline.

The design of this recently completed project was first exhibited and published by the Architectural League of New York as part of the Architectural League Prize, Overlay, and was subsequently published in Architect Magazine's Next Progressives feature.