Los Angeles practice Pentagon designed Venice’s Radius House as a living sculpture with an art-deco esque curving facade reminiscent of a cylindrical drum.

The 3,700 sq ft house is the practice’s first ‘ground-up’ residential project, created for the plot at 640 Milwood Ave to combine curving walls, square picture windows and sharp rectangles.

The four-bedroom Venice Beach property wraps around a central courtyard landscaped by Sarita Jaccard, which borrows from Japanese zen gardens. According to the designer, it’s conceived as a ‘bento box’ of outdoor activities, with a fireplace, sundeck and swimming pool set within a raised basalt slab contrasted by lush tropical greenery.

Interiors of the Los Angeles property – on the market with Engel & Völkers Santa Monica for $7.2m – also have a Japanese feel thanks to tactile walnut panels and cabinetry and white oak flooring.

However, the real triumph is the staircase: often just a ‘through-space’ in homes, this angular artery feels like a destination in itself. An oculus skylight crowns the volume, illuminating crisp Venetian plaster walls and highlighting its sharp wooden planes.

Perhaps unusually, the practice designed the house without a specific client in mind, using Radius House as a testing ground for its ideas. In that spirit, the Venice Beach property has been hosting pop-up exhibitions of art, and design shows ahead of its sale by Amor Corp.

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