On a steep hillside just west of Downtown Los Angeles, two couples wanted to build four homes: two homes for each — one to live in while the other could be rented to help defer the costs of their respective mortgages. With a limited budget — much of which would have been spent fighting the hill with an enormous retaining wall — the clients decided to build a tall, dense structure which sought to have as much of the primary construction material on display as the final finish. The units were a simple arrangement of stacked boxes around a tall vertical shaft which served to introduce light into the depths of an otherwise overly fat building. The circulation in each of the units wrapped around this void — sometimes bridging through and over it. Light voids and openings were made as simply as possible to help develop and dramatize an inside-outside relationship.