Home With Clean Horizontal Lines Echoing the Terraced Vineyards Beyond | Villa GEEF

The clients of The Sanctuary, recent empty-nesters planning ahead to retirement, hoped to downsize and simplify in the design of their new Palo Alto home. When the clients purchased the property, an old wooden fence across the front yard and original house closed off the site from the street. Behind this rough and aged presentation however was an urban refuge of lush vegetation throughout the deep lot. This sense of discovery served as the original inspiration for the design of the house and directed both architect and client to its culmination. The proximity of the downtown Palo Alto area by foot and bike was fundamental to the clients’ decision to purchase this lot, and their belief in building to a higher density in an urban setting lead to the inclusion of a second story apartment. The couple fell in love with the overgrown garden and its obvious potential, approaching Ground Studio Landscape to help them enhance the landscape; retaining scenes of serenity and surprise while creating more of a cohesive and modern feel. Through their collaboration with Ground Studio Landscape, the clients connected with our firm, bringing with them a desire to design a long-lasting modern house that fit comfortably into the surrounding neighborhood while featuring its unique and charming landscape. The house is sited quietly behind the large heritage oak tree with its canopy stretching across the generously sized front yard. After passing under its branches, guests are lead through a series of courtyards and view gardens that weave through the undulating footprint of the building. Each interior space is paired with its own landscape moment, allowing the architecture and landscape to flow into each other. The structure floats on piers, allowing the building to participate in dialogue with the trees on site while protecting the root areas. The floor plate projects beyond the building envelope and dissolves into balconies to blur the sense of indoor/outdoor while at the same time lifting the building up from the ground. Even the driveway is constructed out of floating concrete structural slabs supported on piers to minimize the impact on the heritage oak tree. By expanding the living area to spill into the outdoor spaces, our teams provided ample room for the clients to entertain their ever expanding family. Three pavilions span the depth of the lot. The thoughtfully placed second story apartment is designed for rentals. Below, board-formed concrete walls serve as organizing elements in the main residence which separate private from public areas. Diffused natural light streams into the space throughout the day, working gently with the clean material palette of concrete and Alaskan yellow cedar. The Sanctuary was constructed as a modern house that allows the landscape to speak first. The design features its many hidden courtyards, inviting guests to experience the same sense of wonder that first drew our clients to this urban oasis.

Asbury Park is known for a lot of things—Springsteen, the boardwalk, its wide, sandy beach—but not for high-end luxury accommodations. Enter the Asbury Ocean Club Hotel, a five-star boutique property that opened quietly this summer just steps from the sand, instantly upping the sophistication quotient of this iconic Jersey Shore town only 55 miles from New York. Developed by iStar and managed by Salt Hotels, the 54-key Ocean Club is part of a complex that includes 130 residential condominiums, a business center, and an array of soon-to-come retailers. Designed by Handel Architects, it spans an entire beachfront block. The project’s creative director and head of overall design is Anda Andrei, best known for her work at the Hudson, 11 Howard, and Gramercy Park hotels in New York. She also collaborated with iStar on the Ocean Club’s sister property, the Asbury Hotel, which opened in 2016 and is located just one block inland.

Weekend getaway meets shoppable showroom in this carefully curated residence where everything—even the faucets—is available for purchase. While working on boutique hotels across the U.S., New York–based designer Robert McKinley noticed a shift in the way people were traveling. Realizing that travelers increasingly crave spaces that offer a sense of discovery along with a home-away-from-home feel, the young multi-hyphenate saw a golden opportunity to combine his signature coastal and laid-back style with his favorite brands in a new endeavor—the McKinley Bungalows: rental homes with a “shoppable stay” concept.

Located in a quiet street in one of the most emblematic neighborhoods in Mexico City, this project is an intervention that has its roots on the understanding of the urban and social dynamics in Mexico City. Lirio 7 has an interesting history; as an Art Déco building, originally housed public baths during the 30s, then in the 50s became a sanatorium, and before its abandonment, it was the headquarters of a security company. Considering this conditions, we took advantage from an abandoned building without any recognized heritage value by local authorities, to restore it and offer a specific model of housing that recovers the historical value of Santa María La Ribera neighborhood. The design process is based on the concept of a central patio and its perimeter circulation, which was adapted into a new layout to create 12 new apartments where the main corridor becomes part of the home. In this type of buildings, this circulation is a public place and the challenge on making it private leads to define an enclosure that plays with the visuals. The dwellings are arranged around the patio, orienting their view to it, which is considered as a place of introspection, not so much as circulation. Concrete elements of different heights acts as planters, dampen the sound of the water from the recovered fountain and support the discourse of circulations, interposing themselves to the visuals, again to guide and give privacy to the user. Each of the houses therefore has ventilation and daylight entrance. The first and second floors have a greater free height, typical of the original construction moment, allowing a greater volume of use of spaces. The third level, from the 50s as well as the new structures implemented on deck, maintain a standard height more like that the required by current construction regulations. A perforated concrete prism, outstands from the patio’s façade, creating a visual contrast without stealing it protagonism. With a different materiality and density from the rest of the project, this volume patches the view from the outside, creating a light and shadows game towards the last apartment, and allows the user to enjoy the views.

New Zealand is a country where the landscape around the house steals the show more often than not. But the Wanaka House designed by Three Sixty Architectu manages to holds its own with a design that includes a couple of gable roofs and an interior that puts the focus firmly on the view outside. The […]

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