Architecture Wednesday: Carmel Highlands

There are no words for this house, really.

It's very modern, very, um, disco ... I mean, that red kitchen ... but the views are killer and the site is spectacular and there's all that glass and the Pacific.

Let's not think about the Ugly Couch Room, and just imagine Austin Powers or James Bond going villain hunting here.

And sipping a nice red wine while the sun sets.

Home DSGN

Architecture Wednesday: Butterfly House

When the clients visited the site of their future home, they were amazed at all the butterflies visiting the area; amazed, and inspired. Thankfully the suite wasn’t overrun by gophers or else we’d have an entirely different home this week.

But the architect took the butterfly inspiration and created a home divided into three smaller pavilions, each capped by a winged roof.

And each pavilion has a separate function: the central pavilion houses the main living room, dining room, kitchen and office nook, while one other pavilion houses two bedrooms, bathrooms and a relaxation area, and the third pavilion holds the master suite.

Each pavilion is not particular large, but each open to terraces and views which expand the space exponentially. The butterfly roofs bring in views of the surrounding hills, bring the outdoors in, and also harvest rainwater. Each roof funnels water onto to a rain chain fountain and into landscape collection pools, which then gather it into cisterns where it is stored and used to irrigate the landscape. In addition, the pavilions were sited to allow water to flow under the office bridge and for storm water to seep slowly into the ground in the main courtyard.

It really is perfect for butterflies.

via HomeDSGN

Architecture Wednesday: Fall House

In the late 1990s, a Chicago-based executive and his family found a triangular 1.5-acre site on a bluff with a 250-foot drop to the ocean upon which they wished to build a vacation home.

Enter Anne Fougeron, a San Francisco–based architect, understands that architecture cannot compete with the landscape, especially the landscape along the California coast near Carmel.

The couple knew that they didn’t want a dark stone and redwood cabin like the ones so prevalent in the area, but something daylight-filled, with a low profile, and made of a mix of materials.

Fougeron conceived a copper-clad and glass form set into and hugging the cliff that subtly zigzags down the slope, its slanting roofline echoing the descent. And the clients loved the weird shape; Fougeron based her design on the curve of the Pacific banana slug.

The structure is invisible from the road, although its drama — a cantilever on two sides that thrusts the nose of the house out over the bluff — is only slowly revealed as you descend the site on foot.

The highest volume, entered from the driveway, contains an open-plan living room and kitchen, wrapped in warm mahogany on the south-facing walls and set off by limestone floors. To the north, the facade is almost all glass — large panels set in a robust, elegant custom steel-framing system. This allowed the architect to create vast glazed openings to border the ocean and coastline, as well as have them withstand 70-to-80-mile-an-hour winds. To provide visual relief from the relentless theater of the view, Fougeron opened the living room to a quiet sunken terrace to the south, protected by the natural berm and retaining wall behind it.

A nearly all-glass library unites the living room and kitchen on the upper part of the slope with the master suite on the lower. Five perforated steel beams in the glass roof connect to a beam that sits on the bearing wall but they disappear just enough to create the effect of a planetarium. But, it’s the master bedroom that is the grand finish to this floor, with floor-to-ceiling windows it seems to hover in the sky over the ocean.

A below-ground concrete bunker is perpendicular to the grade-level volumes and contains bedrooms, storage, and mechanical systems while serving as an enormous anchor.

In addition to the northern glass facade, a connection to the outdoors is maintained from east to west, all the way from the living room through to the master bedroom, because of interior fenestration near the ceiling.

Fougeron was concerned about the views’ overwhelming the intimacy of the interiors, and proposed alternating clear and frosted glass panes, until, one day, surveying the views, she said, "You know, maybe “overwhelming” isn’t such a bad thing.”

No it ain't. This is the perfect house for the Northern California coastline; you get the views, but are protected from the winds and the cold. I can see myself, sipping a nice bottle of Pinot Noir while gazing at the sea.

Aaaaah.

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