13-007 Sunrise
Conceived as a garden pavilion complimenting an existing contemporary guest house, Sunrise was designed to respond to its rugged, remote, and beautiful surroundings. With a quiet simplicity of form and a refined material palette, this home harmonizes with the existing structures and the powerful hillside landscape.
The clients, a newly retired couple, used the property and guest house as a weekend retreat for years before engaging with our firm to build a sleek, modern cabin in the hills above the Sonoma Wine Country.
Both husband and wife have a strong appetency for cultivating the land. She is an avid gardener, passionate about sustaining and growing her own production garden while he enjoys maintaining the property, and discovering, post-retirement, the relaxing qualities of the Healdsburg hills. At its core, the inspiration for the home was crafting a space for the homeowners to enjoy both the outdoors and the charms of honest living.
To preserve the elegant quality of the desired “glass house”, the structure of the home is expressed on the exterior. Round steel columns stretch upwards across two stories to support the sunshade and thin corrugated metal roof; balancing modern lines with delicate panes of glass. Two monolithic concrete forms at the East and West facades provide both structure and storage while visually anchoring the building to the site.
Materiality
The interior has a pared-down material palette consisting of bleached Douglas fir, white Carrara marble, and concrete floors. Minimalists by nature, the clients craved simplicity without starkness; accents of bronze, blackened steel, and Claro walnut bring richness to the interior furnishings, balancing the austere nature of concrete and steel.
Glass walls on three sides of the home allow for a strong physical and visual connection to the landscape, including the adjacent gardens and orchards, and the distant Mt. Saint Helena.
