Keeping the original mottled, worn-brick walls and outfitting the kitchen with their own custom cabinetry were among this couple’s cost-saving measures.
Embracing the natural environs of their family home—a 1970 Deck House nestled among 175-foot-tall tulip poplar trees—residents Darren Selement and Cathryn Rich updated the kitchen with a rich material palette of wood and stone. Cherner barstools are paired with custom, cherry-stained alder cabinets by Holiday Kitchens, Barocca soapstone countertops, and flooring from Globus Cork.
Inside Out Architecture renovated an apartment in the Clerkenwell section of central London, removing interior walls to create an open, loft-like living space. The architects were taken in by the "dramatic geometry" of the existing board-formed concrete ceiling, and their design maintained and emphasized its dynamic criss-crosses and texture.
The sunken bathtub in George Nakashima’s Sanso Villa mimics the shape of a swimming pool on the grounds. His daughter, Mira Nakashima, took over the studio after his death and now lives and works on the property. “A Japanese garden often has a central pond derived from the character for ‘heart’ or ‘spirit,’ and this may be an abstraction of that character,” she says of the tub’s sculptural form.
For Gabriel Ramirez and his partner Sarah Mason Williams, following the Sea Ranch rules—local covenants guide new designs—didn’t mean slipping into Sea Ranch clichés. The architects love Cor-Ten steel, with its ruddy and almost organic surface, and they made it the main exterior material, along with board-formed concrete and ipe wood. The Cor-Ten, which quickly turned an autumnal rust in the sea air, and the concrete, with its grain and crannies, mean the house isn’t a pristine box, Ramirez says. His Neutra house “was very crisp and clean,” he says. “This house is more distressed, more wabi-sabi.”
