Yucca Valley, California
Located on a unprecedented seven-acre web site only a few miles from Joshua Tree Nationwide Park in California’s Mojave Desert, the Orbital Home, designed by Ed Ogosta and his architectural workforce for Steve Kim, is surrounded in all instructions by huge boulders and geological formations estimated at 9 million years outdated.
The Orbital Home has been just lately awarded a 2022 American Structure Award and a 2022 Inexperienced Good Design Award from The Chicago Athenaeum and The European Centre for Structure Artwork Design and City Research.
It’s on this virtually lunar panorama that our purchasers requested a weekend house of 1,700 sq. toes which related deeply with the panorama but didn’t overwhelm it. Set just under a saddle-shaped despair in one of many few boulder-free components of the terrain, the Orbital Home was thus envisioned as an experiential outpost providing a porous reference to the land whereas harboring a shaded temperate inside.
An structure of major experiences urged a geometry of major types, so the home within the plan is an ideal sq. inside a circle: the sq. being an enclosed dwelling house, and the circle is a big roof disc that shelters the house beneath like an umbrella.
The round roof additionally creates a number of deep-covered porches that wrap across the complete constructing and strategically body views, offering a shadowy transition zone between every inside house and the uncovered desert surroundings.
Two massive roof gentle screens additionally pull daylight into the middle of the constructing and grow to be signature roof types harking back to the encompassing topography.
A easy palette of white plastered partitions and heavy concrete platforms reinforce the basic tectonics of the mission whereas referencing the materiality of conventional desert structure.
The entry sequence into the home is rigorously curated: upon arrival on the carport, one enters via a gate and ascends a path up the slope, which ends up in the round quantity of the home nestled into the terrain.
Passing via the mirrored entrance door, a darkened passageway results in the primary dwelling space, the place massive expanses of glass dramatically reveal the rugged panorama past.
By way of these glass doorways lie the patio and pool beneath, the place one can swim via the desert amongst the cacti and boulders.
Lastly, since this a part of California is legendary for its clear evening skies, a deck atop the round roof supplies a novel horizontal platform for celestial stargazing.
Through an structure of simplicity, readability, geometry, and depth, the Orbital Home satisfies our consumer’s request for a desert home that gives a serene environment, a novel perspective on nature, and a deep connection to the cosmos.
Undertaking: Orbital Home
Architects: Edward Ogosta Structure
Lead Architect: Ed Ogosta
Structural Engineers: C.W. Howe Companions
Consumer: Steve Kim
Pictures Courtesy of the Architects
