Price Skyspace, Los Angeles, California
From Archiplanet
 | Price Skyspace |
| Designer | Nicholson Architects, Santa Monica, California, USA , Architect |
| Location | Los Angeles, California, USA |
| Date | 2004 to 2006 |
| Building Type | concrete block, and composite materials |
| Climate | naturally ventilated |
| Context | hillside construction |
| Architectural Style | modern |
| Builder | Dick Minium |
| Street Address | |
| Notes | Santa Monica Canyon; designed with artist James Turrell. |
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| Building Details | |
| Client | Mrs.Dallas Price-Van Breda |
| Program | permanent art installation |
The project was a collaboration with artist, James Turrell and Duncan Nicholson, Architect commissioned by Mrs. Dallas Price-Van Breda. The building is a permanent exhibit at a private residence in the Santa Monica Canyons. The structure is set as an object on the sloped hillside adjacent to the residence.
The structure is formed on an elliptical plan that has a larger elliptical aperture centered inside the space. The structure of the building is concrete block surfaced with redwood siding that matches the material of the existing Price Residence designed by Ray Kappe, Architect.
The entry to the skyspace is an elliptical bronze portal the interior space is venetian plaster, and the room contains a large built-in wood seating bench. The portal is formed from a rolled bronze sheet into an elliptical tapered shape that opens outwardly as it serves as entry and reflects the shape of the floor plan, fabricated by Ramsey Daham of Breakform Design. The African Padauk wood bench is an elliptical shape along half of the room that serves to provide places to observe the light show. The custom shaped bench is made from 1900 pieces of padauk and has been cut and sanded to match the curvature of the back of a sitting human being. The bench was designed by Duncan Nicholson and was fabricated by Timothy Rives Rash II, a local carpenter and architecture student at the time.
The Aperture is the focal point of the space and is completely open to the sky. It recedes to an ultra thin composite edge along the opening and from below the room the sky is observed as a crisp 2D line of separation that appears as a flat plane. The work could be described as manipulating the natural light at two specific times of day, dawn and sundown.
[edit] References
- [1] - The New York Times, April 24, 2005
