Rustic Canyon Residence
Conner & Perry Architects · Completed Work
The Rustic Canyon Residence
A home grown from the canyon floor — where the trees set the rules, and the architecture listens.
Interior courtyard looking toward the pool · Photo: Taiyo Watanabe
The Site
Kappe Land
There is a small microclimate tucked into Santa Monica Canyon that the late architect Duncan Nicholson called "Kappe Land" — a tribute to Ray Kappe, whose hillside masterpieces defined the standard for a generation of Los Angeles modernists. This is where Conner & Perry Architects have completed the Rustic Canyon Residence: a 6,800-square-foot home that feels less like a building and more like a second canopy layer over the canyon floor.
The design did not begin with a program or a parti. It began with trees — specifically, with a stand of ancient Oaks and towering Eucalyptus that already owned the site. Every structural decision, every roofline, every massing move was negotiated with those trees first. The architecture came second.
Residence entrance · Photo: Taiyo Watanabe
The Idea
One Canopy, Two Layers
The dominant formal move of the Rustic Canyon Residence is its roof: wide, cantilevered eaves that spread like the tree canopy above them, mimicking the shelter of the Oaks rather than competing with it. This is not stylistic reference — it is structural empathy. The building and the landscape speak the same spatial language.
The central courtyard operates as the heart of the plan. Massive glass walls pocket completely away into the wall planes, collapsing the boundary between inside and outside until the distinction becomes meaningless. You are not looking at the courtyard from inside the house. You are in the courtyard, and the house has simply agreed to surround you.
Dining and kitchen open to central court · Photo: Taiyo Watanabe
Materials & Philosophy
Built to Age
The material palette was selected not for appearance but for time. Charred wood siding, copper, exposed steel, and board-formed concrete — each chosen because they age alongside the landscape rather than against it. In ten years, in twenty years, these surfaces will not look dated. They will look earned.
"Fallen Eucalyptus wood salvaged from the property was repurposed into custom outdoor seating and key interior details — ensuring the DNA of the site remains physically present in the home."
— Conner & Perry Architects
That detail — the Eucalyptus seating — is the most quietly profound decision in the project. When a tree falls on a site, the conventional response is removal. Here, the wood was milled and crafted into furniture. The site's own history becomes the home's furniture. The canyon, quite literally, built the house.
Office nestled around existing oak tree · Photo: Taiyo Watanabe
Floating stair · Photo: Taiyo Watanabe
The Interior Experience
Light as Architecture
The interior was designed from the inside out — a phrase that sounds like a cliché until you experience what it actually means here. The plan was organized around human movement and the behavior of light, not around square footage or room count. Massangis grey limestone and French oak floors provide the ground. Weathered brass and blackened steel provide the counterpoint.
The floating staircase is the spatial centerpiece: a uniquely detailed element that the architects treated as much as a light instrument as a circulation device. Paired with strategically placed skylights, it allows the sun to track through the house across the day, projecting a moving pattern of tree shadows onto the walls and floors — and, incidentally, onto the world-class art collection of owners Jamie Price and Brad Schlei. The house is the frame. The light is the painting.
Library with overhead skylight · Photo: Taiyo Watanabe
The Legacy
Nicholson's Intention, Carried Forward
The Rustic Canyon Residence was built from the original design intention of Duncan Nicholson — whose practice, and whose nickname for this canyon, set the lineage in motion. Conner & Perry carried that intention forward in collaboration with Olivia Williams Interior Design, landscape architect Matt Merrell of Landscape Workspace, and the craftsmanship of RAM Development and Dick Minium Construction.
The result is a 6,800-square-foot residence that does not announce itself. It settles into its site. The canopy above and the canopy of the roof become one reading. The canyon continues, undisturbed — and the house, gratefully, becomes part of it.
Pool courtyard with open sliders · Photo: Taiyo Watanabe
"The canyon continues, undisturbed — and the house, gratefully, becomes part of it."
Architectoid · Organic Architecture in Practice
Nicholson → Conner & Perry · Santa Monica Canyon, Los Angeles
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