Georgina Residence

Acting both as designers and clients enabled us to treat the project as a case study in which creating a place of harmony and wonder could be totally aligned with ambitious environmental goals including working toward a net-zero energy house.

The environmental strategies for the house reflect a tiered approach:

Passive design: The house is shaped in section and plan to optimize convection, natural cooling, daylight, shading, and winter heat gain. The “section” of the house is extruded throughout so that every room participates in this passive design.

The two-story space at the core of the house is not only environmentally critical but functions as a kind of piazza which links all the living spaces. All rooms benefit from the careful washing of daylight and the framing of the landscape. At night the same shaping allows indirect lighting to create its own nuanced environment.

In plan, the house develops as a “yin-yang” diagram with interior and exterior complementing and overlapping along a flexible boundary. This creates long diagonal views and movements on a tight urban lot. A gallery-like space links all the rooms and creates a transitional zone between inside and out.

Renewables: Photovoltaic panels are designed to provide over 100% of the electric energy. Solar water panels are designed to provide radiant heat, domestic hot water and pool heating.

Landscape: The landscape focuses on drought-tolerant native materials, a roof garden of native grasses, and onsite water retention.

Materials and technology: Throughout the house, materials were selected for minimal environmental impact. An array of low-energy-consuming products such as LED lighting significantly reduces the energy loads.

Monitoring: Systems are designed so that monitoring and adjustments can take places over years of inhabiting the house. This is critical so that we can use the house as a laboratory for our clients and ourselves. While designing sustainably, we found that we could further elevate our concerns for the choreography of space, the magic of light and shadow and the harmony between building and landscape. The house is evolving with a richness and subtlety of experience, a range of transitions between inside and out and an ever-changing awareness of the magic of the natural elements.

The 7,500 sf Yorkin Residence sits between the traffic of the Pacific Coast Highway and the calm of the Pacific Ocean. The house expresses the dualities of the site: it is solid and urban on the highway, transparent and transformable toward the water and vertically connected to the light and sky. The house serves as a social and familial retreat for the owner, her two adult children and their families, all of whom were intimately involved in the design process. It was critical that the house accommodate one person or many with equal comfort, and to support a full spectrum of activities, from formal to informal throughout all seasons. This dense program led to an urban courtyard house typology, a matrix of spaces overlaid with a system of sliding glass and interior panels to provide varying degrees of community and privacy and a range of openness to the environment. Stair halls weave vertically through the layers of the house to bring light, color and openness from above.

On the second floor, a series of three ‘master’ bedroom suites and two grandchildren’s rooms, each with their own coastal views, range across the ocean side of the house, while a guestroom above the entry courtyard and an exercise room with steam bath join a gallery across the highway side. The palette is calm and sophisticated without being formal. Colors of the beach and ocean are woven with brighter accents that recall pieces of beach glass found in the sand. Outdoor spaces, including a rooftop terrace and a covered outdoor room with fireplace, offer places for active play, sunbathing and shaded relaxation sheltered from wind and sun.

The Livermore Residence is situated on an 18,000 acre ecological preserve in Monterey, California. Program elements of the home and their placement on a uniquely varied topography are central to the design concept. Knolls, swales and rock outcrops provide critical inspiration for the shaping of the architecture and its adjacent exterior spaces.

Access to both the 11,000 sf main residence and guest cottage is along a curvilinear driveway; tucked into the natural topography, a restored riparian corridor intersects the driveway to frame the entry to the site. The crescent shape of the main residence preserves the knoll, while optimizing views both south to the distant California coastal range and north to adjacent ridge lines. The house is articulated as a weaving crescent of interior and exterior spaces, each varying in form, size, character, and orientation. A sweeping zinc roof protects the south facing leeward terraces and courtyards from the predominant northerly winds, while maximizing opportunities for north light. Light scoops in the form of monitors, habitable bay windows and stairways frame the interaction of color and natural light.