Builder: Falcon Custom Homes Interior Designer: Mary Burns - Gallery Photographer: Mike Buck A perfectly proportioned story and a half cottage, the Farfield is full of traditional details and charm. The front is composed of matching board and batten gables flanking a covered porch featuring square columns with pegged capitols. A tour of the rear façade reveals an asymmetrical elevation with a tall living room gable anchoring the right and a low retractable-screened porch to the left. Inside, the front foyer opens up to a wide staircase clad in horizontal boards for a more modern feel. To the left, and through a short hall, is a study with private access to the main levels public bathroom. Further back a corridor, framed on one side by the living rooms stone fireplace, connects the master suite to the rest of the house. Entrance to the living room can be gained through a pair of openings flanking the stone fireplace, or via the open concept kitchen/dining room. Neutral grey cabinets featuring a modern take on a recessed panel look, line the perimeter of the kitchen, framing the elongated kitchen island. Twelve leather wrapped chairs provide enough seating for a large family, or gathering of friends. Anchoring the rear of the main level is the screened in porch framed by square columns that match the style of those found at the front porch. Upstairs, there are a total of four separate sleeping chambers. The two bedrooms above the master suite share a bathroom, while the third bedroom to the rear features its own en suite. The fourth is a large bunkroom above the homes two-stall garage large enough to host an abundance of guests.

Design focused on nestling into the hillside, views of the valley, distinct private and public spaces while always considering full accessibility for aging in place. Energy-efficient design features include geothermal heating and cooling, radiant floors and a super-insulated envelope. Photo Credits: David Stansbury

Minimalist one-story flat roof photo in San Luis Obispo

Flavin Architects collaborated with Ben Wood Studio Shanghai on the design of this modern house overlooking a blueberry farm. A contemporary design that looks at home in a traditional New England landscape, this house features many environmentally sustainable features including passive solar heat and native landscaping. The house is clad in stucco and natural wood in clear and stained finishes and also features a double height dining room with a double-sided fireplace. Photo by: Nat Rea Photography

Joe Fletcher Atop a ridge in the Santa Lucia mountains of Carmel, California, an oak tree stands elevated above the fog and wrapped at its base in this ranch retreat. The weekend home’s design grew around the 100-year-old Valley Oak to form a horseshoe-shaped house that gathers ridgeline views of Oak, Madrone, and Redwood groves at its exterior and nestles around the tree at its center. The home’s orientation offers both the shade of the oak canopy in the courtyard and the sun flowing into the great room at the house’s rear façades. This modern take on a traditional ranch home offers contemporary materials and landscaping to a classic typology. From the main entry in the courtyard, one enters the home’s great room and immediately experiences the dramatic westward views across the 70 foot pool at the house’s rear. In this expansive public area, programmatic needs flow and connect - from the kitchen, whose windows face the courtyard, to the dining room, whose doors slide seamlessly into walls to create an outdoor dining pavilion. The primary circulation axes flank the internal courtyard, anchoring the house to its site and heightening the sense of scale by extending views outward at each of the corridor’s ends. Guest suites, complete with private kitchen and living room, and the garage are housed in auxiliary wings connected to the main house by covered walkways. Building materials including pre-weathered corrugated steel cladding, buff limestone walls, and large aluminum apertures, and the interior palette of cedar-clad ceilings, oil-rubbed steel, and exposed concrete floors soften the modern aesthetics into a refined but rugged ranch home.

Rising amidst the grand homes of North Howe Street, this stately house has more than 6,600 SF. In total, the home has seven bedrooms, six full bathrooms and three powder rooms. Designed with an extra-wide floor plan (21'-2"), achieved through side-yard relief, and an attached garage achieved through rear-yard relief, it is a truly unique home in a truly stunning environment. The centerpiece of the home is its dramatic, 11-foot-diameter circular stair that ascends four floors from the lower level to the roof decks where panoramic windows (and views) infuse the staircase and lower levels with natural light. Public areas include classically-proportioned living and dining rooms, designed in an open-plan concept with architectural distinction enabling them to function individually. A gourmet, eat-in kitchen opens to the home's great room and rear gardens and is connected via its own staircase to the lower level family room, mud room and attached 2-1/2 car, heated garage. The second floor is a dedicated master floor, accessed by the main stair or the home's elevator. Features include a groin-vaulted ceiling; attached sun-room; private balcony; lavishly appointed master bath; tremendous closet space, including a 120 SF walk-in closet, and; an en-suite office. Four family bedrooms and three bathrooms are located on the third floor. This home was sold early in its construction process. Nathan Kirkman

The design for this addition and whole house renovation project connects the existing 72 year old, 600 sq. ft. Cottage to the existing two car detached garage. The cottage renovation creates new private living areas, such as the Master Bedroom Suite, Library/Study, and Studio/Project Room. The new addition is more public and includes the Kitchen/Breakfast Area and Great Room. Connecting the two sides of the house is a new Entry Hall, and a "Greenhouse" Vestibule that leads to a private deck. See this project in ShadyAve Magazine: Peak Performance And on HGTV: Homes Across America Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

An addition and remodel to a home sited on a gently sloping hillside in San Carlos, CA. The existing structure, a badly worn post-war ranch style house, was reinvented by substituting new single-slope roof forms in place of the old sagging gables. A new master bedroom suite addition established an ‘H’ plan which delineates two juxtaposed exterior spaces: a public entry court on the street side and a private fire patio in the lower rear yard.

The design for this addition and whole house renovation project connects the existing 72 year old, 600 sq. ft. Cottage to the existing two car detached garage. The cottage renovation creates new private living areas, such as the Master Bedroom Suite, Library/Study, and Studio/Project Room. The new addition is more public and includes the Kitchen/Breakfast Area and Great Room. Connecting the two sides of the house is a new Entry Hall, and a "Greenhouse" Vestibule that leads to a private deck. See this project in ShadyAve Magazine: Peak Performance And on HGTV: Homes Across America Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

The design for this addition and whole house renovation project connects the existing 72 year old, 600 sq. ft. Cottage to the existing two car detached garage. The cottage renovation creates new private living areas, such as the Master Bedroom Suite, Library/Study, and Studio/Project Room. The new addition is more public and includes the Kitchen/Breakfast Area and Great Room. Connecting the two sides of the house is a new Entry Hall, and a "Greenhouse" Vestibule that leads to a private deck. See this project in ShadyAve Magazine: Peak Performance And on HGTV: Homes Across America Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

This house west of Boston was originally designed in 1958 by the great New England modernist, Henry Hoover. He built his own modern home in Lincoln in 1937, the year before the German émigré Walter Gropius built his own world famous house only a few miles away. By the time this 1958 house was built, Hoover had matured as an architect; sensitively adapting the house to the land and incorporating the clients wish to recreate the indoor-outdoor vibe of their previous home in Hawaii. The house is beautifully nestled into its site. The slope of the roof perfectly matches the natural slope of the land. The levels of the house delicately step down the hill avoiding the granite ledge below. The entry stairs also follow the natural grade to an entry hall that is on a mid level between the upper main public rooms and bedrooms below. The living spaces feature a south- facing shed roof that brings the sun deep in to the home. Collaborating closely with the homeowner and general contractor, we freshened up the house by adding radiant heat under the new purple/green natural cleft slate floor. The original interior and exterior Douglas fir walls were stripped and refinished. Photo by: Nat Rea Photography

This new 1,700 sf two-story single family residence for a young couple required a minimum of three bedrooms, two bathrooms, packaged to fit unobtrusively in an older low-key residential neighborhood. The house is located on a small non-conforming lot. In order to get the maximum out of this small footprint, we virtually eliminated areas such as hallways to capture as much living space. We made the house feel larger by giving the ground floor higher ceilings, provided ample natural lighting, captured elongated sight lines out of view windows, and used outdoor areas as extended living spaces. To help the building be a “good neighbor,” we set back the house on the lot to minimize visual volume, creating a friendly, social semi-public front porch. We designed with multiple step-back levels to create an intimacy in scale. The garage is on one level, the main house is on another higher level. The upper floor is set back even further to reduce visual impact. By designing a single car garage with exterior tandem parking, we minimized the amount of yard space taken up with parking. The landscaping and permeable cobblestone walkway up to the house serves double duty as part of the city required parking space. The final building solution incorporated a variety of significant cost saving features, including a floor plan that made the most of the natural topography of the site and allowed access to utilities’ crawl spaces. We avoided expensive excavation by using slab on grade at the ground floor. Retaining walls also doubled as building walls.

Design director and project manager-Chris Jacobson This was the first time we used stitched Sunbrella canvas to create additional shade for our arbors. It still makes a nice solution. Photo- Chris Jacobson, GardenArt group

Contractor: David Clough Photographer: Dan Gair/Blind Dog Photo, Inc. This period home straddles two centuries and dual roles. As the home for the headmaster of an independent high school, it is also considered a school asset as a facility for visitors. Formal details define the public rooms that accommodate school functions. A ground-floor guest suite hosts campus visitors. The catering-quality kitchen, like a hinge, connects the intimate living quarters to formal spaces. The heart of their family sanctuary is the great room just beyond the kitchen. The headmaster holds occasional student classes in his living room, connecting students to this campus legacy. He and his wife can see the front door of the main building from his upstairs window. Boundaries between public and private life are sensitively articulated throughout.

Inspired by another mid-century modern home the client owned, this new residence represents a much larger 21st-century version built into the gently sloping hillside to take advantage of the sprawling hilltop views of the Sonoma valley. The quiet front facade leads guests into a formal entry that divides the house into private and public spaces. Rounding the corner into the great room, one is immediately hit by the breathtaking view that extends outward beyond the infinity pool and deck through a continuous wall of glass. In the opposite direction, each of the three bedrooms was designed with its own seating area and bathroom, creating private suites for family members and guests alike. The linear design and open, flowing living spaces provide almost every room with outdoor access to the expansive patio, protected from the Sonoma heat by deep overhangs. Warm woods, clean lines, and a rhythmic post and beam ceiling design create a homey feeling of rest and relaxation, evoking the essence of modern California living. Klopf Architecture project team: Geoff Campen, Ethan Taylor, Noel Andrade, and John Klopf Landscape Architects: Arterra Landscape Architects Structural Engineer: ZFA Contractor: Eames Construction Photography: ©2022 Mariko Reed Completion year: 2022

Eric Rorer
Inspiration for a large mid-century modern galley medium tone wood floor eat-in kitchen remodel in San Francisco with flat-panel cabinets, white cabinets, wood countertops, stainless steel appliances, an island, white backsplash, glass sheet backsplash and an integrated sink

Atherton has many large substantial homes - our clients purchased an existing home on a one acre flag-shaped lot and asked us to design a new dream home for them. The result is a new 7,000 square foot four-building complex consisting of the main house, six-car garage with two car lifts, pool house with a full one bedroom residence inside, and a separate home office /work out gym studio building. A fifty-foot swimming pool was also created with fully landscaped yards. Given the rectangular shape of the lot, it was decided to angle the house to incoming visitors slightly so as to more dramatically present itself. The house became a classic u-shaped home but Feng Shui design principals were employed directing the placement of the pool house to better contain the energy flow on the site. The main house entry door is then aligned with a special Japanese red maple at the end of a long visual axis at the rear of the site. These angles and alignments set up everything else about the house design and layout, and views from various rooms allow you to see into virtually every space tracking movements of others in the home. The residence is simply divided into two wings of public use, kitchen and family room, and the other wing of bedrooms, connected by the living and dining great room. Function drove the exterior form of windows and solid walls with a line of clerestory windows which bring light into the middle of the large home. Extensive sun shadow studies with 3D tree modeling led to the unorthodox placement of the pool to the north of the home, but tree shadow tracking showed this to be the sunniest area during the entire year. Sustainable measures included a full 7.1kW solar photovoltaic array technically making the house off the grid, and arranged so that no panels are visible from the property. A large 16,000 gallon rainwater catchment system consisting of tanks buried below grade was installed. The home is California GreenPoint rated and also features sealed roof soffits and a sealed crawlspace without the usual venting. A whole house computer automation system with server room was installed as well. Heating and cooling utilize hot water radiant heated concrete and wood floors supplemented by heat pump generated heating and cooling. A compound of buildings created to form balanced relationships between each other, this home is about circulation, light and a balance of form and function. Photo by John Sutton Photography.

This remodel is a stunning 100-year-old Wayzata home! The home’s history was embraced while giving the home a refreshing new look. Every aspect of this renovation was thoughtfully considered to turn the home into a "DREAM HOME" for generations to enjoy. With Mingle designed cabinetry throughout several rooms of the home, there is plenty of storage and style. A turn-of-the-century transitional farmhouse home is sure to please the eyes of many and be the perfect fit for this family for years to come. Spacecrafting

This view reveals the primary public spaces of the residence which have a raised ceiling and clerestory windows. At bottom of photo shows a block enclosed utility area which holds pool utilities, recycling and trash. Visible at rear of residence , the use of "outrigger" style steel beams that project away from edge of roof line, these reference classic mid century architecture and add a quality of lightness to the structure. The roof was purposely kept as free from any utilities as possible enhancing the views of the structure from above. More images on our website: http://www.romero-obeji-interiordesign.com