In the Hollywood hills neighborhood of Los Angeles, known for prominent houses (and celebrity residents), a small one-story, windowless, white-plastered steel-framed volume emerges eerily from a grassy knoll.

“I conceived the house as land art,” says Monika Haefelfinger, the Swiss architect who founded XTEN architects in 2000 in L.A. with her late husband, Austin Kelly. “We design strong sculptural forms at the scale of the landscape.” Along the street-facing wall, a stainless-steel door pivots open to a small garden. There, stepping-stones over a shallow black terrazzo reflecting pool lead to a front door of glass with slender steel framing set into floor-to-ceiling glazing.