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Project Details:

Location: Ojai, California

Designer: Samantha Mink / @samanthamink.bodyofwork

Footprint: 2,600 square feet

Builder: Steve Schneider and Andrew Stasse

Structural Engineer: Gordon Polon

Civil Engineer: Stantec

Landscape Design: Terremoto Landscape with Sushwala Hedding

Photographer: Daniel Dorsa / @danieldorsa

From the Designer: “This house, dubbed Prime, is mostly concealed from the street, save for the concrete monolith that rises up from a meadow and splits it into two parts. The house’s entrance has a 1,000-pound concrete door that must be opened slowly. While buried on one side, the house opens itself up on the other, towards a century-old oak tree and the primary spaces of the house.

“Twelve feet below grade, at the bottom of the monolith, is the Sanctuary, the heartbeat of the house. There is a hot tub at its base and an oculus thirty feet above. Getting here is a ritual in itself, as it can be entered only by water, through a discreet channel from the pool or by disguised doors in two of the bedrooms. The waterfall which cascades from the top of the tower conceals the only entry to the secret space.

“With a pool running the full length of the house, every room has direct water access. The choreography of inhabitation is characterized by guests who eddy inside and out, into and out of the ground and bodies of water, collecting themselves in and around the sunken living room or one of several pool ‘rooms:’ some for wading, some for diving, some for lounging in the shade provided by the extended beams of the roof.

“Prime can be deceptive and contradictory. Many of its ins are outs; it is both below grade and above ground; it appears large and commanding while maintaining a modest size; it is heavy and dark and also full of light and reflective surfaces—the glass, the unexpected skylights, the water, the polished metal orbs which float in the pool, each returning images of the house reversed or upside down.

“Prime is a project of patience, perseverance, and trust. It is seductive, ethereal, and transportive. It insists upon immersion and offers the possibility of transformation. It is also, quite simply, a house, for a family and their friends. Prime is, fundamentally, a monument to living.”