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with the fabric of a neighborhood that has not been cratered by major
remodels. Humanly scaled, integrated and edited to the essential,
Rear Window House is quintessential Ogosta, a reductivist who starts
with copious concepts then "removes things until you can't remove
anything else." e idea, he says, is clarity. "It's a fine line between
a boring box and something that is simple and yet profound," which
makes Rear Window House a kind of poetry, the manner in which
it merges older elements in the neighborhood, including form and
materiality such as simple, inexpensive shingle with components that
are clearly contemporary (large expanses of glass, a low roof pitch
that slopes on the diagonal).
Inside, the minimalist space reverberates a James Turrell and
Robert Irwin influence. "I'm very interested in light and space," says
Ogosta, a game experimenter of both, installing strategically placed
skylights in Rear Window House. "ere's kind of a wonderful
moment that I love," says Ogosta, describing sunrise in the space,
when the sun comes up and fills the house with two different types
of light, one golden and the other blue. Stand in the hallway, he says,
and one can see both hues at once. "e walls are just white and the
glass is clear and you have all this color coming from the sun. ose are the moments that my work is really about."
Specific to this project, his work is also a model intervention, modest and undiluted. "We could have done way
more; ripped it all down and made this a 3,500-square-foot house on the lot, which is happening in lots of other
places in Culver City and all throughout L.A.," says Ogosta in a tone that suggests he's not at all happy with this.
It's Ogosta's approach that has seen his firm win a number of accolades, including the AIA National Small Projects
Award 2018 for Rear Window House. "It is a prototype of what's possible," he explains. "ere's a huge disconnect
between what people to want to live in and what they need to live in. If this house is all we need for the next 50
years, that will be just great." edwardogosta.com
