Step inside The Phoenix, a house by Feldman Architecture

(Image credit: Ema Peter)

The hint is in The Phoenix's name – this is a home rebuilt following significant damage at a fire in its California region in 2017. The retreat, a mountain home for a private client, sits on a plot at the top of a ridge in Healdsburg, with views stretching across the valley as far as Mount Saint Helena. Its owners worked with San Francisco studio Feldman Architecture to not only bring back their beloved escape but also take this opportunity to improve upon its design.

Tour The Phoenix: a retreat reborn

The home is defined by 'a series of elongated, stacked, rectilinear forms stretching from east to west,' the architects explain. Helping to carve these out, a gesture moving the swimming pool from its original position downslope of the main house to the heart of the layout, was critical in crafting a strong flow internally, as well as a meaningful relationship between indoors and outdoors.

The living spaces are open and orientated towards the striking green views. A bespoke lighting sculpture by studio DRIFT punctuates these communal entertaining spaces.

Meanwhile, 'an adjacent graveled back patio accommodates an outdoor kitchen with a woodfired pizza oven, as well access to raised vegetable beds lining the northern façade, encouraging a true farm to table lifestyle,' the architects write.

The primary bedroom suite is placed above the living spaces, floating in a cantilevered volume that overlooks the surrounding nature of the rolling Healdsburg hills.

Green roofs and a western deck allow residents to embrace the outdoors on the higher level of the home too. At the same time, these, alongside solar panels and more environmentally friendly systems and features, make sure the home engages with principles of sustainable architecture.

The same nature-sensitive approach went for the internal design too, its interiors crafted by Gaile Guevara Studio.

feldmanarchitecture.com

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Ellie Stathaki is the Architecture & Environment Director at Wallpaper*. She trained as an architect at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in Greece and studied architectural history at the Bartlett in London. Now an established journalist, she has been a member of the Wallpaper* team since 2006, visiting buildings across the globe and interviewing leading architects such as Tadao Ando and Rem Koolhaas. Ellie has also taken part in judging panels, moderated events, curated shows and contributed in books, such as The Contemporary House (Thames & Hudson, 2018), Glenn Sestig Architecture Diary (2020) and House London (2022).