Angled walls, slender windows, and a Le Corbusier-influenced roof deck break up the chunky white volumes of this residence, which architecture studio Urban Operations has built into a hill in Los Angeles.

Locally based Urban Operations excavated a chunk from a hill at 4752 East Baltimore Street in the city's Highland Park neighbourhood ? where Knowhow Shop has also built itself a faceted mini studio ? to make way for the 2,400-square-foot (223-square-metre) property.

Three white-stuccoed volumes stagger down the site, with each detailed with various openings, recesses and protrusions to make the most of light and surrounding views.

"The design marries strategic hillside engineering with a series of stepped programmatic volumes, which are then sliced and folded at various code-generated orientations in order to produce a unified holistic design," said a project description from Urban Operations.
A series of outdoor areas across included in the residence provide each of the spaces inside with external access.

Among these is a roof deck that the studio based on Le Corbusier's early modernist villas, which typically included gardens on top. It offers residents vistas of the city's Griffith Park and the San Gabriel Mountains.

Another terrace is located on the second level down, underneath an opening cut into the sloped roof above. This is followed by a third courtyard on the first level, which acts as the forecourt to the home's main entrance. An outdoor stairca...