Architectural firm: Diego Cano-Lasso
Project name: Cano House
Location: Los Angeles, USA
Dimensions: 209 square meters

Nestled in the hills of Los Angeles and opening out onto a spectacular panorama, the house designed by Diego Cano-Lasso reinterprets the lightness of Californian modernist architecture in a tactile and "bodily" way. Although the point-supported structure – with steel columns and cantilevered glulam beams – the open and flexible floor plan, the essential volume pierced by large glazed openings and the continuous dialogue with light and the landscape evoke the aesthetic of the Case Study Houses, the project tempers their abstraction through a pronounced materiality. What lends the house an unusual physicality and accentuates its "lived-in" character are finishes, details and furnishings with a highly tactile texture, often self-built and creatively re-cycled: from the side façades clad in zellige tiles, to the interiors imbued with the warmth of wood; from the guttering imported from Spain, recycled and transformed into lampshades, to the handles carved from stones collected on the beach, to the boulders unearthed during the site excavations and repurposed as coffee tables.