Woodside, California
This project was completed by Jennifer Brodie while she was a Project Architect at Lundberg Design. As the project lead she took the project from initial schematic design all the way through construction administration.
The residence sits on a flat three-acre property at the top of a hill surrounded by mature pine and redwood trees that screen the property from the surrounding neighbors. The house is sited around the existing trees with a view towards the western hills.
There are three buildings on the site – the main house, a pool house and a guest cottage. The cruciform shape for the siting of the buildings divides the hilltop into four outdoor “rooms” each with a unique use, orientation and character with the intention of reducing the scale of the overall building and creating different experiences. The first area encountered is the entry courtyard that leads to the copper-clad front door of the main house and the guest cottage entry as well as the upper garage highlighted with a corten steel garage door. The second quadrant is a private garden area for the guest cottage. The meadow gathering area off of the family room and living room is the third zone and meets up with a diving pool south of the pool house. A spa/hot tub is located out of sight, south of the diving pool. The sculpture garden outside of the offices and next to the water feature/lap pool makes up the final area and constitutes the roof with skylights to an underground garage. The main house is two stories with one story extensions that appear to connect to the one-story pool house and guest cottage on either side by exposed beams. The step down to these buildings was intentional to scale down the overall massing presence of the building on the site. The main house consists of the living room, dining room and kitchen, four bedrooms, 4 full baths, a powder room and two offices. The basement level consists of a half bath, a movie theater, a wine room, and a laundry room. Curving retaining walls, create a tunnel to an underground garage, next to the laundry room, designed to house the cars and keep this utilitarian structure underground to maintain the beauty of the surrounding natural landscape and limit above ground structures and reduce surface paving.
The intent was to create a home that blends into the surrounding landscape. The landscape design was carefully incorporated into the design to highlight and compliment the architecture. A lightwell with planters and stairs to the basement, brings light down to this lower level. It also provides three stories of windows allowing a view from the glass elevator at each level.
The building is a steel structure with concrete floors, zinc roofing and Shou Sugi Ban siding which is a Japanese method of preserving wood by charring. This unique treatment of the wood makes the building exterior low maintenance and almost non-combustible. Two story high channel glass along the front colonnade allow for slivers of light to penetrate the interior of the main hallway. The combination of all of these low flammable materials creates a building that acknowledges its flammable California location and with the landscape design we did as much as possible to make this as fire resistant as possible without sacrificing design and function. High performance glazing and insulation greatly reduce the energy demands. Solar panels on the roof offset more than half of the energy requirements of the residence and 5’ overhangs help to shade the glazing.
One of the most unique elements of the interior is made apparent when one enters the house and sees the incredible stainless steel spiral staircase that transports you from the main level to the upper and lower levels. This unique piece of vertical sculpture anchors the two levels both in visual form and function. A glass elevator which acts as a moving room, does the same to connect the three levels together.
This residence took years to design and build and the result is a simple, yet elegant and functional home that takes full advantage of such a unique site.
