xten portfolio

Monika Häfelfinger was born in Basel, Switzerland in 1965. From 1982 to 1986 she apprenticed at the office of her father, an ETH/ Harvard GSD educated architect, Häfelfinger Architekten in Switzerland. In 1987 she moved to Los Angeles to enroll in the architecture program at University of Southern California, from which she graduated with a Bachelor of Architecture Degree in 1992 receiving the Robert Allen Rogaff Award. In 1994 she graduated from Columbia University with a Master of Science Degree in Advanced Architectural Design. From 1994 through 1995 she worked for the architectural office of Herzog and de Meuron in Basel, Switzerland, playing a key role in several award winning buildings and competitions. In 1996 she returned to the US, working for DMJM/ Keating on high-rise buildings in Asia before estab-lishing her own design studio. In 2000 she established XTEN Architec-ture with partner Austin Kelly. Monika Häfelfinger lives in Los Angeles. Austin Kelly, AIA was born in Boston, Massachusetts in 1966. In 1988 he graduated from Williams College in Massachusetts with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Studio Art and Economics and was awarded the Sand-erson prize in Architecture. In 1989 he attended SCI-Arc in Vico Mor-cote, Switzerland for architectural design studios with Peter Zumthor and Ivano Gianola. In 1993 he graduated from Yale University Graduate School of Architecture with a Master of Architecture degree. From 1993 through 1998 he worked in the Los Angeles architectural offices of Frank Israel, Frank Gehry and Eric Owen Moss, playing a substantial role in several award winning projects. In 1999 he worked for DMJM/ Keating on high-rise buildings in Asia, and also began teaching at SCI-Arc in Los Angeles. From 2000 to 2004 he led architectural design studios at the University of Southern California School of Architecture. In 2000 he established XTEN Architecture with partner Monika Häfelfinger. Austin Kelly lives in Los Angeles.

XTEN Architecture is an award winning architecture firm located in Los Angeles, California, with satellite offices near Basel, Switzerland. Founded in 2000 by partners Monika Häfelfinger and Austin Kelly, XTEN Architecture is a full service architecture and design firm specializing in cultural buildings, office and commercial facilities, large-scale residential projects and custom single family residences. Buildings are developed using the most innova-tive green technologies and materials available and guided efficiently from design through construction.

XTEN has developed a distinctive method to the development of contem-porary architecture, with an emphasis on minimalist logic, material transfor-mation and refined detailing and craftsmanship. Underlying themes in the work have focused on the conceptual use of building elements, modified with both traditional and digital techniques. In new buildings, remodels and adaptive re-use projects, the architects develop strong sculptural forms and spaces transformed by both direct and indirect connections to the buildings’ immediate environment.

In 2004 the firm was recognized as one of twelve Emerging Architects to watch nationally in Architectural Record magazine and in 2006 they were featured in the grand re-opening exhibition at the Architecture+Design Museum in Los Angeles. In 2006 and 2007 XTEN was presented awards in Architectural Design from the American Institute of Architects and at the IV Bienal Miami+Beach they were awarded the bronze medal in Architectural Design in international competition. The work of XTEN Architecture has been published extensively appearing on the cover of Architectural Digest and in Architectural Record, Interior Design, LA Architect, The Los Angeles Times Magazine, Angeleno, Elle Décor UK, Interni (Russia), Spa De (Japan), Times Space (China), Belle (Australia), Disenart (Spain), AD Mexico and Deutsche Bauzeitung in addition to numerous architectural design books.

Buildings in design and construction include several custom residences, gal-leries, private museums and commercial projects in the US and large-scale buildings and competitions in Switzerland, China, and the Middle East.

The Openhouse is embedded into a narrow and sharply sloping prop-erty in the Hollywood Hills, a challenging site that led to the creation of a house that is both integrated into the landscape and open to the city below. Retaining walls are confi gured to extend the fi rst fl oor living level into the hillside and to create gardens on two levels. The front, side and rear elevations of the house slide open to erase all boundaries between indoors and out, connecting the spaces to gar-dens on both levels.

Glass, in various renditions, is the primary wall enclosure material. There are forty-four sliding glass panels, each seven feet wide by ten feet high and confi gured to disappear into hidden pockets and allow for uninterrupted views and access to exterior terraces and gardens. There are also fi xed glass walls, mirror glass walls and light gray specular glass panels which lend lightness to the interior spaces.

The glass walls are visually counterweighted by sculptural, solid elements in the house rendered in stone, dark stained oak, tinted concrete and plaster. The use of cut pebble fl ooring throughout the house, decks and terraces continues the indoor-outdoor materiality, which is amplifi ed when the glass walls slide away. The building fi n-ishes are few in number but applied in a multiplicity of ways through-out the project, furthering the experience of continuous open spaces from interior to exterior.

Set in a visible hillside area above Sunset Boulevard, the Openhouse appears as a simple folded line with recessed glass planes, a strong sculptural form at the scale of the site. The minimalist logic of the ar-chitecture is transformed by direct and indirect connections to nature. With the glass walls completely open the house becomes a platform defi ned by an abstract roof plane, a palette of natural materials, hill-side, gardens and the views.

Openhouse Los Angeles, California | Residential

AIA Next/LA Design Award | 2007Bienal Miami+Beach Architecture Award | 2007

Architectural Digest USA | December 2007 | cover AD Mexico Mexico | February 2008Desinart Spain | April 2008 Peruarki Peru | April 2008 Interni Russia | April 2008 Traco Portugal | April 2008Elle Decor UK Britain | May 2008 Interni & Decor South Korea | May 2008Mezzanine Russia | May 2008Residence Sweden | May 2008 Belle Australia | June-July 2008 | coverInside Out Spain | July 2008Architektur & Wohen Germany | August 2008 House Design Source Spain | 2008 Architecture Highlights China | 2008

Openhouse Los Angeles, California 06 | 07

08 | 09Openhouse Los Angeles, California

Openhouse Los Angeles, California 14 | 15

New Structure Grading / Retaining Walls Building Envelope

First Floor Level Second Floor Level rst Floor Level Second Floor Level


Section B - B

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The Diamondhouse is located deep in a canyon and set against a se-verely sloping hillside. The building geometry was developed in direct response to hillside code parameters and articulated to provide maxi-mum space in, around and on top of the modestly scaled building.

The material treatment of the house developed from natural elements found on site. The façade pattern is rendered with laser-cut aluminum panels, which are then anchored to the base building with steel clips. The panels are light, porous, and capable of reflecting and refracting the available daylight. At night, recessed lighting placed behind the pan-els will allow the building to glow from within like a lantern. The diamond filigree patterning does not follow the building walls or apertures, but generates its own logic of sequencing and scaling, creating a dynamic relationship with the base building geometry and with the natural can-yon environment.

As an echo of the building façade system, the rooftop concrete deck and retaining walls are finished with the same diamond pattern used on the main building. The concrete is embossed with the variously scaled pat-tern by adding inserts to the formwork. In this way the pattern repeats and reflects across diverse conditions, producing multiple effects of light, shadow and shape in the experience of the building and its im-mediate surroundings.

Diamondhouse Santa Monica, California | Residential

AIA Next/LA Design Award | 2006

LA Architect USA | October 2006 Deutsche Bauzeitung Germany | November 2006 Arquitectura Mineral Spain | 2007 Residential Architect USA | April 2008

Diamondhouse Santa Monica, California 20 | 21

Diamondhouse Santa Monica, California 22 | 23

Wall Section

The Vhouse is a modern courtyard house set in a wooded canyon site. Four bearing walls are oriented perpendicular to the hillside and follow the site lines of the v-shaped lot. The folds and cantilevers of the roof geometry are articulated to respond to specific site conditions: turned down at the street edge to create privacy; folded up above the bearing walls to gain light from the sides; and sloped up again at the rear of the site to open the interior spaces to the hillside through full-height glass.

The courtyard is planned as an outdoor room around which the differ-ent types of day and nighttime living are organized. Direct access from the open kitchen allows for outdoor dining and entertaining through-out the year, while secondary openings in the bearing walls allow for access from the bedrooms in the mornings.

The exposed detailing and materiality of the house reinforce the archi-tectural concept of connecting the house to nature. The bearing walls are clad in wide redwood planks that wrap continuously from exterior to interior through fixed glass panels, visually extending the interior spaces. Secondary walls are panelized with redwood slat partitions alternating with fourteen glass door and transom modules. Exposed wood framing overhead aligns with these alternating solid/void areas, generating a series of continuous lines that articulate the interior spaces and frame the landscape beyond.

Vhouse Sherman Oaks, California | Residential

Architectural Record House of the Month | May 2005

CasaD Italy | January-February 2004Angeleno USA | March 2004Rivera USA | March 2004House Design Spain | 2004Today’s Country Houses Spain | 2005Beautiful Houses Russia | December 2007

Vhouse Sherman Oaks, California 26 | 27

The FordBrady building was originally built as a vaudeville theater in the 1920’s, which was then converted to a Chinese language cinema in the 1940’s, and has now been transformed into a 12,000 sf contemporary furniture showroom, art gallery and loft, with storefront retail spaces serv-ing the emergent art scene in Chinatown.

Natural light enters the project through a 2,200 square foot courtyard cut into the former ‘black box’ of the cinema. This new courtyard serves as the main gathering space for the building and links the various spaces to adjacent streets. The courtyard façades are made of alternating verti-cal bands of glass and resin plywood, the lower half of which opens to provide a dozen points of passage between interior and exterior. The operable wall calibrates the perception between the indoor/outdoor and private/public spaces in the project. Looking from inside towards the courtyard, the vertical frames capture thin slices of the outdoor activ-ity. When the solid panels are completely opened the interior loft space becomes contiguous with the exterior courtyard.

The primary showroom/gallery was created by terracing the sloping floor of the original auditorium space. The resulting multi-level show-room, gallery and private spaces are defined by new white forms set within the existing roof and red brick walls of the theater. The ceiling and exposed wood trusses are continuous over the enclosed service spaces, maintaining the scale of the original theater space from every vantage point in the building.

FordBrady Chinatown | Los Angeles, California | Exhibition

Los Angeles Times West Magazine USA | January 2007Interior Design USA | July 2007California Home+Design USA | October 2007Contemporary House Design Spain | 2008SPA-DE 9 Tokyo | May 2008Interni & Decor South Korea | May 20081000 Interiors China | May 2008Times Space China | August 2008

FordBrady Chinatown | Los Angeles, California 30 | 31

32 | 33FordBrady Chinatown | Los Angeles, California

34 | 35FordBrady Chinatown | Los Angeles, California

Sapphire Encino, California | Exhibition

Sapphire is a gallery addition designed to display a growing art collec-tion while providing for glass facades with views to the surrounding hills. The new structure is connected to the existing gallery spine of the main house, extending it up to a second story for light and views. The build-ing geometry is articulated as a large tapered double cantilever, creating three separate galleries and a delicate connection to the main house. The resultant minimal footprint maintains the gardens and continuity of the landscaping around the house.

Sandwiching the steel frames is a building façade system that was devel-oped to provide solar protection for the art while still allowing for visual connections to the hillside gardens. The South façade and inclined roof are clad in photovoltaic solar cells that are customized into a trapezoidal array, a pattern that continues on the East and West facades of the build-ing as perforated aluminum. A patterned ceramic frit gradient applied to the insulated glass and specialized façade shutters further modulate the daylight and protect the artworks.

The gallery partitions are independent from the building structure to allow for flexibility in staging the galleries in the future. Heating and cooling are achieved through a radiant floor system embedded into the concrete decks. Rainwater is collected from the roof runoff and recycled as gray water for the irrigation system and other recycled materials are used throughout the new building. The monocrystalline solar array is designed to produce 15kWh per day – enough for all the energy requirements of the new gallery and a surplus to be directed to the main house and back into the city power grid.

Sapphire Encino, California 38 | 39

photovoltaic arrayradiant cooling ceilingceramic glass fritbraced framesolar shutterssolar screen

radiant heat floorgraywater collecting tankradiant cooling tankradiant heating tankinverterelectric meterto municipal electric gridpermeable paving

Environmental Systems

Pattern References and Facade Studies


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Unfolded Structural Elevation w/ Glass Ceramic Gradient

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The Mhouse is an artists’ work-live/gallery compound located near the arts district of Venice Beach, California. The conceptual framework for the building took the form of two interlocking L-shaped volumes, one dedicated to the art studios and one for domestic functions, config-ured around a central courtyard — the new focal point of the artists’ compound.

The painter’s studio required a large, raw space with high ceilings and abundant natural light and ventilation. Facing the courtyard, the studio flows outdoors through a double-height glass roll-door and can be opened on the opposite side as well as for indoor/outdoor painting, gallery openings and video projections. Support spaces and galleries wrap around the courtyard and link the painter’s studio to the living spaces. A red stair leads to the master suite, a series of decks and a rooftop atelier with ocean and mountain views.

The building is oriented on the site to maximize passive cooling during the summer and in the winter radiant floor heating warms the spaces. Recycled fly-ash was used in the concrete floors throughout and galv-alum panels with 80% recycled content were used almost exclusively on the exterior of the project, as roof, wall, soffit, canopy — providing continuity between adjacent surfaces to reinforce the concept of the work/live compound as inter-related and inter-dependent elements.

Mhouse Marina del Rey, California | Exhibition+Studio

Angeleno USA | October 2004Interior Design USA | August 2005Venice, CA: Art & Architecture in a Maverick Community USA | 2007Ecological Houses Spain | 2008Black Book Los Angeles USA | Feb 2008The Home Bulgaria | May 2008Monthly Interiors South Korea | June 2008

Mhouse Marina del Rey, California 46 | 47

PAINTING STUDIO

VIDEOSTUDIO

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VIDEO WALL

48 | 49Mhouse Marina del Rey, California

First Floor Level Second Floor Level Roof Plan

Silverspur is a 30,000 square foot renovation to a modernist office build-ing located on the Palos Verdes peninsula in Southern California. On the interior small offices were removed to create large, open loft spaces and sustainable design elements were integrated. On the exterior a new façade was developed to modernize and increase the energy efficiency of the building.

A green roof was added to provide thermal mass and insulate the interior from solar gain while allowing for rainwater collection and percolation on site. Radiant heat was added below the new concrete topping slabs to reduce reliance on the forced-air heating system. New high-efficiency fix-tures and equipment, recycled carpeting and tile were added through-out the building, and full height vision glass was used to maximize daylight and reduce the need for artificial light.

The building façade is composed of perforated, micro-laminated solar fab-ric stretched over steel frames that are anchored to the cantilevered con-crete building slabs at various angles depending on solar orientation and building program. The solar fabric reflects 80% of the incoming solar gain while allowing for full transmission of natural daylight so that from inside one has complete views of the landscape and city beyond. The material also changes the appearance of the building throughout the day depend-ing on the position of the sun, appearing opaque in the direct sun and translucent as the sun moves oblique to the façade. At night the interior spaces glow through the fabric like a Noguchi lamp at the scale of the city.

Silverspur Palos Verdes, California | Commercial

Architecture+Design Museum USA | Next Gen Exhibition | 2006Fabric Architecture USA | September/October 20061000 x Americas Architecture Germany | 2007Contemporary Ecological Architecture Germany | June 2008Architecture and Design: Los Angeles Germany | DAAB | 2008

Silverspur Palos Verdes, California 52 | 53

Silverspur Paols Verdes, California 54 | 55

Himmelrain Park is a series of nine apartment buildings set in a small town near Basel, Switzerland. The staggered, irregular distribution of the buildings follows the contingencies of the site and maintains sight lines to the surrounding countryside. Car parking is kept un-derground in several interconnecting garages with direct access to the buildings above. The project is conceived as a variation on the villa-in-a-park typology, maximizing density for the allowable zon-ing while maintaining openness through the site and privacy for the apartments.

The buildings are conceived as a stack of different unit types that each receives a different material treatment to reduce the scale of the buildings and define the different unit types. There are five units per building, each developed with flexible, non-structural partition walls wrapped around a compact core. The units can be altered to be entirely open, loft-type spaces, or as one, two or three bedroom units depending on how the partitions are arrayed around the core.

The ground floor contains two maisonette units, with deep-set win-dows in the bedrooms for privacy and glass walls in the living spaces that slide away and open directly to terraces and gardens. The sec-ond level contains two compact units side by side, with a ventilated façade of fritted translucent glass to increase the sense of transpar-ency from both the interior and exterior. The top floor penthouse units are large loft spaces defined by full building-length terraces and curved concrete, zinc-clad roof forms that reinterpret the expressive roof forms found in the traditional regional architecture.

Himmelrain Park Sissach, Switzerland | Commercial+Planning

ARCH Slovenia | January 2004Architectural Record USA | August 2004Bauen+Wirtschaft Switzerland | January 2008FORM USA | February 2008

Himmelrain Park Sissach, Switzerland 58 | 59

Sissach, Switzerland

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The Schönberg Park Apartments are designed around the idea of liv-ing amongst the trees and the picturesque landscape outside of Bern, Switzerland. The building forms were abstracted from local typologies — Villa, House, Barn — and configured on the site to carefully deflect around and thread between the existing trees. Differences in plan and elevation allow for both privacy and views to the Park from every apart-ment, and also for the neighbors across the lane maintain a direct con-nection to Schönberg Park.

The glazing is proposed with an imprint of the trees which acts like a light drapery on the building, filtering the sunlight to interior spaces in the manner of tree canopies overhead. From the outside, the patterns enter into a visual relationship with the existing trees and register on different facades at different scales.

Other local materials and forms were transformed and utilized for the project. Traditional ceramic roof tiles are used on the north walls, ex-terior cobblestones continue inside the building spaces, and louvered wooden shutters are reimagined in patterned glass. The buildings are perceived as solid from certain vantage points and from others they dis-solve into pattern and landscape.

Schönberg Park Bern, Switzerland | Commercial+Planning

Schönberg Park Bern, Switzerland 68 | 69

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Querschnitt

Längsschnitt

The competition brief for a new train station and the surrounding area in Liestal, Switzerland requested that the new architecture and urban plan should connect the Bahnhofplatz with the medieval quarter at the center of the city. The two areas are currently separated by parking lots, factories and a 20-meter elevation change. The strategy proposes a new glass hall Bahnhof as the starting point and visual anchor for a se-ries of vectors of movement and development connecting and reinvigo-rating disparate parts of the city.

The specific architectural elements developed to connect these areas include habitable bridges, a lake in lieu of a large parking lot and a series of trapezoidal residential towers formed to channel and direct ones view from the Bahnhofplatz to the city center. Hotel and bank buildings facing the B ahnhofplatz are lifted off the ground to allow the public areas to go through the buildings and for the buildings to become visual frames for the medieval quarter.

Other program elements such as artists housing and community schools were developed as linear buildings with the service and circula-tion zones along the rail and large expanses of glass opening to the landscape on the opposite side. Older buildings were adapted and re-modeled as museum spaces, studios and civic offices. By mixing public with private spaces and prioritizing the literal and visual connective elements of the urban plan, See Park proposes vectors of development as a growth strategy to augment the concentric rings of building that have characterized the city historically.

Seepark Masterplan Liestal, Switzerland | Commercial+Planning

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Seepark Seepark M 76 | 77

xten portfolio

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