Creating a generous home for a 5-strong family in a relatively compact site, full of constraints – such as zoning laws and neighbour's rights of light – is a considerable challenge for any architect. However, it is one that Studio Vara took in their stride, when tasked with a similar project by a young Palo Alto couple.
The San Francisco based architects were ‘challenged to squeeze in a generous kitchen, living room, six bedrooms and seven bathrooms, plus a family room, office, gym and wine room into this tight envelope', explains the team, headed by Maura Fernandez Abernethy and Christopher Roach. Situated in a prominent corner plot of the Old Palo Alto neighbourhood, the residence is placed on the site's outermost corner, in order to preserve the rear yard for breathing space and garden.
The ground level centres on a small, open air courtyard. This move, not only helps flood the interior with light, enhancing the open plan's airy feel, but also helps to blur the boundaries between inside and outside, bringing a little bit of the lush garden foliage in. Around it flows a sequence of kitchen, dining, and living areas.
A slender, transparent staircase leads up to the first floor, where bedrooms and bathrooms are located, in a more conventional series of independent spaces. A basement, generously lit by light wells and openings, completes the living spaces, hosting a family room, an exercise room and a guest bedroom. Combining comfort and lightness, the architects focused on finding the right balance between open and closed areas, different materials and volumetric compositions throughout the design.
‘From the street, the house appears to hover lightly above the ground, the effect of slightly elevating the first floor above grade and recessing the basement below decks and wing walls around the perimeter,' says the team. ‘Overall, the exterior reads as a composition of stacked volumes, an effect that is emphasized by giving each level a unique primary material: board-formed concrete for the basement, cedar and larch siding for the main level, and dark panelised zinc for the top floor.'
INFORMATION
-
How Billecart-Salmon became the hospitality industry’s champagne of choiceNeil Ridley ventures into a subterranean temple to patience and precision beneath the village of Aÿ-Champagne, France, and discovers a winery not of spectacle, but of soul
-
In Baku Sakashita’s new lighting collection, hand-dyed silk threads are delicately illuminatedIn ‘Haku’, ultra-fine LEDs are woven within plant-dyed threads, showcasing intricacy, artistry and traditional Japanese craftsmanship
-
Discover the chic simplicity of CC-Steding jewelleryNic Farnan and Ben Chaplin create delicate silver jewellery in their east London studio
-
Inside a Malibu beach house with true star qualityBond movies and Brazilian modernism are the spur behind this Malibu beach house, infused by Studio Shamshiri with a laid-back glamour
-
An Arizona home allows multigenerational living with this unexpected materialIn a new Arizona home, architect Benjamin Hall exposes the inner beauty of the humble concrete block while taking advantage of changed zoning regulations to create a fit-for-purpose family dwelling
-
Michael Graves’ house in Princeton is the postmodernist gem you didn’t know you could visitThe Michael Graves house – the American postmodernist architect’s own New Jersey home – is possible to visit, but little known; we take a tour and explore its legacy
-
Explore Tom Kundig’s unusual houses, from studios on wheels to cabins slotted into bouldersThe American architect’s entire residential portfolio is the subject of a comprehensive new book, ‘Tom Kundig: Complete Houses’
-
Ballman Khaplova creates a light-filled artist’s studio in upstate New YorkThis modest artist’s studio provides a creative with an atelier and office in the grounds of an old farmhouse, embedding her practice in the surrounding landscape
-
The most important works of modernist landscape architecture in the USModernist landscapes quite literally grew alongside the modern architecture movement. Field specialist and advocate Charles A. Birnbaum takes us on a tour of some of the finest examples
-
Jeanne Gang’s single malt whisky decanter offers a balance ‘between utility and beauty’The architect’s whisky decanter, 'Artistry in Oak', brings a sculptural dimension to Gordon & MacPhail's single malt
-
An idyllic slice of midcentury design, the 1954 Norton House has gone on the marketNorton House in Pasadena, carefully crafted around its sloping site by Buff, Straub & Hensman, embodies the Californian ideal of the suburban modern house embedded within a private landscape
