LOS ANGELES — New arrivals to this city are often told by locals to hop in the car and take Sunset Boulevard to the Pacific Ocean. It is a beautiful drive, world famous. It is also an initiation into the California myth without the downsides: you glide past the traffic-clogged 405 freeway, wind through rustic canyons where movie stars live and breathe in the ocean breezes west of Brentwood, as if nature had provided Angelenos with free air-conditioning.

On this same stretch of road, the newcomer is sure to encounter some of the city’s daring architecture. Just before Pacific Palisades proper, there is a curved hill, and clinging to it, a house gingerly balanced on massive concrete stilts. The two-story, redwood-sheathed home appears to hover dangerously above the road. It is architecture that broadcasts, This is not Cleveland. The out-of-towner looks up, considers earthquakes and shudders.

Thomas Carson, a Los Angeles architect who admires the home’s engineering bravado, said it has become part of the scenery of this famous route. “Everybody knows about it,” Mr. Carson said. “It’s one of those iconic houses you first see when you’re driving west on Sunset.”

J. Scott Carter, a fellow architect, likened it to another familiar Southern California sight. “It’s like a freeway overpass with those concrete pillars,” he said, adding, “From below, you don’t get any sense of somebody being in the house.”