Los Altos Hills is a suburb of San Francisco, we're about 40 miles south up in the hills,
when we first came here to see the existing home it was almost like the spaceship had just plopped
here in the land. The spaces were not open to the view, the living room space was in the back
and there was a vision to do a significant remodel, we took that way beyond.
The more we envisioned the possibility of what
this building could be the greater the excitement of the team became,
in a sense it was a very introverted house on a site that actually has views all around so the
important thing that we changed was expanding a garage to act as a plinth a base for the house.
And the stair which leads you to an upper level.
And then you come in and you see a framed view of the kitchen with its slatted screens,
there's a slow reveal of what the house is going to be about.
And you turn in and you suddenly experience this really grand space
which is a great room which has the living space, it has the dining and
12-feet tall ceilings which open out to these really magnificent views.
The edge of the house leans out towards the view and it's also
connected and anchored to the land on the west side,
suddenly there really is no distinction between what's inside and what's outside and honestly a
lot of Californian architecture is really about blurring those moments whenever it's possible.
One of the unique stories here was that when you came into the old house you actually go underneath
the house and you would rise up through the donut circle through the stair to enter into the spaces
and the real transformation here was to still work within that footprint of the existing home
but we enclosed that patio space to create the core hub of the house which became the kitchen.
We created an oculus opening in the centre of this
kitchen hub which essentially was just a square skylight with a round soffit.
It was pretty fascinating once it was framed out that's when we started observing how it
actually functions like a sundial and moves about at different points in time
and every detail every point along the way we had to ask ourselves should it be curved,
should it be straight and we pushed the envelope we made curved doors
for the kitchen cabinets, we have curved lines that represent joints in the floor,
the deck boards were tapered so that they would radiate out from that centre point.
Yes it was difficult it was challenging but we had a contractor and a superintendent
specifically who created a tool, was a 16 foot high 45 foot long compass that
he used to clearly be precise about the layout for all these elements of the house
and of course there was a point at which it was no longer needed and there was a moment
at which he cut the base of the tool and it's now our doorstop for the entry door.
In terms of materials we have these really dark charred woods which have a very strong
texture and they actually help the building blend a little bit more into the landscape,
it's a pretty powerful geometry and shape so the idea was always to soften it.
I think the concrete was important material here too, we changed the shape of the garage
and the base of the building that concrete in connection with all the landscape walls
that are curved is a nice pairing that really grounds this building on its site.
In terms of overall finishes and materials, this project was very minimalist in a way.
Yeah I would say the one material that really stops the house from being cold
or sterile would really be the walnut that features in the floors and all the casework,
it just becomes a backdrop I guess for the clients to live out their lives.
I'd never worked on a roundhouse on Anjali never worked on a roundhouse
this was a unique find for us and the clients and the idea of just
transforming this and imagining what could be in the future was super exciting for us.
Staying true to the original idea, the design and elevating it making
it purer now that we are looking at it with a fresh lens of 50,
60 years that technology and industry has moved forward with was an incredible amount of fun.
We had a big idea from day one, so I'm really proud of all the details and
all the decisions down the road and all the collaboration we had to really honour that,
this was a wonderful experience.