Twenty Mile House’s Twenty-Mile Material Restriction

Twenty Mile House’s Twenty-Mile Material Restriction was Bernadette Fox’s self-imposed rule that every material used to build her house on Mulholland Drive had to be sourced within twenty miles of the site. More than a limit on transport, it rejected the idea that nearby availability alone made a material local: steel bought at a nearby store but shipped from China would not qualify. The rule turned construction into a search for nearby sources and helped give the finished house its distinctive combination of reclaimed materials and bright, carefully composed surfaces.

Definition and Purpose

Fox committed to the restriction while planning a house on a parcel near Runyon Canyon in Los Angeles. The available site had a flat building pad and a view of the city; a neighboring parcel was also for sale, but she and Elgin Branch could not afford it. Fox invited builder David Walker to take on the challenge, and the rule required him and the project team to think about where materials came from, not simply where they could be purchased.

The restriction was precise in its geographic limit but practical in its treatment of reuse. Materials recovered from a dump were acceptable even if their original source lay outside the twenty-mile radius. Their reuse within the project made salvage a way to meet the rule, rather than a reason to disqualify a material. The distinction kept the requirement focused on local sourcing while allowing discarded materials to enter the house.

How the Rule Shaped Construction

After Fox received a permit for a three-bedroom, roughly four-thousand-square-foot glass-and-steel house with a detached garage and guesthouse, construction drew on sources around the region. A cement factory in Gardena supplied sand, which Fox mixed on site. A recycling yard in Glendale alerted her when steel beams arrived. A house being demolished down the street supplied material from its dumpster, while tree trimmers provided wood for cabinets, flooring, and furniture.

The process depended on active coordination as well as salvage. When welding was needed, Walker brought in a welder; Fox explained what she wanted, and the worker responded with a solution. Walker could work without a complete set of plans, while Fox’s skill at obtaining permits helped the project proceed. The material rule thus operated within a hands-on building practice: local sources, recovered stock, on-site work, and the practical adjustments required to turn available materials into a house.

Appearance and Recognition

The restriction did not produce the makeshift-looking structure that some visitors expected from a project built partly with salvaged materials. The house was a sparkling glass box with clean lines and no drywall or paint. Concrete floors, wooden walls and ceilings, and exposed-aggregate counters flecked with broken glass made the material choices visible without making the interior feel heavy; visitors described it as lighter inside than outside.

In 1992, before LEED and before the later prominence of green-building programs, the house drew the attention of people associated with the MacArthur Foundation. During their visit, Fox was building the garage, pouring concrete into forms and making tilt-up walls; the visitors took off their jackets and helped. The house’s beauty and its construction method arrived together in that scene: the local-material rule was not merely a specification on paper but part of a building process that could invite others to participate. The recognition helped Fox put the house on the market.

Demolition and Afterlife of the Rule

The house’s later destruction sharply contrasted with the care and labor invested in building it. It took three years to complete and was demolished in a single day by three bulldozers. Its surviving record was sparse: a few photographs taken by realtor Judy Toll and the comically incomplete plans Fox had submitted to the building department. The rule had governed what could enter the house, but it could not protect the finished building from demolition.

Twenty years after the house was built, the Green Builders of America and the Turner Foundation made its material principle the sole restriction in a design challenge to reenvision and rebuild it. Entrants were asked to design a three-bedroom, 4,200-square-foot residence at 6528 Mulholland Drive, with every material sourced from within twenty miles of the site. The competition reframed Fox’s private constraint as a public prompt for discussion about what green building should mean in the following twenty years. Although the original house no longer stood, the rule survived as both a practical design test and the clearest means of recalling what made the project distinctive.