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This house, designed by architectural firm Marmol Radziner, is a tight and modular Bauhaus-style work of art located in Venice, CA. The sharpness and hard lines of the exterior are mirrored in the interior. On the ground floor a sliding slotted screen, retaining walls, and narrow and high horizontal windows assist in maintaining privacy. On the top floor, however, floor-to-ceiling windows generously allow the outside in while their panes subscribe to a visually pleasing 1:3 ratio. The dining room windows have the same 1:3 ratio while doubling their function (how very economical) to act not just as windows and light bearers, but as picture windows and a scenic backdrop in lieu of conventional dining room wall ornamentation like a painting. Because that would be, well, oh so bourgeois.

The interior is endowed with rich, open-grain walnut cabinetry, which is complemented by clean white walls and counters. Like any Bauhaus design, this house keeps things to a minimum without all those undesirable bourgeois details. Even the lighting is recessed into the ceiling for a smooth, uninterrupted appearance. The floors are underdone in poured cement in the common areas while the more intimate areas of the house like the bathrooms and bedrooms have hickory hardwood floors. The architect must have wanted to soften the more personal rooms, but didn't want to stray info superfluous territory, so used a wood that is hard like concrete to keep the density consistent throughout the house. Additionally, these materials -- concrete and hickory -- are incredibly durable and strong and therefore make for a very rational house.

While the piéce de résistance is the exterior slotted shade, the colour palette is really quite remarkable both on the interior and exterior. The interior relies on a streamlined palette that carries through each room: white, brown walnut, light gray and black. The exterior is without embellishment and so assumes its natural surroundings as part of its palette, which is composed of dark brown, green and blue. Stunning.