Roughly 1,000 feet above sea level on the slopes of Mauna Loa, Captain Cook (population 4,000) is a world away from the manicured lawns and putting greens of the sprawling resorts elsewhere on Hawaii’s Big Island. The center of the Kona coffee industry, the area is verdant and a little wild, with small farms that dot the landscape and banana plants as tall as two-story buildings.

Mitchell Lee Marks bought six acres of agricultural land here in the 1990s. Two decades later, when he was on the verge of retiring from his career as a professor at San Francisco State University, he decided to build a house on the property and begin life as a farmer. For help, he turned to Craig Steely, a Hawaii- and San Francisco–based architect whose climatically attuned work he had seen and admired.

Steely remembers seeing the land for the first time and bushwhacking through thick, overgrown underbrush to determine where the new house should go. “The site was filled with cat’s claw and guinea grass and feral mango trees,” Steely recalls. “You couldn’t see anything. The cat’s claw was six feet tall.” With some clearing, however, the architect knew that the upper portion of the site, which sits 300 feet above a road, would provide a panoramic view of Kealakekua Bay and the Kona coastline. “When you look at it now, it’s like, how could you not build it here?” he says.

“I didn’t ask for a round house. Nothing against round houses, but it wasn’t like, ‘Ooh, how cool, I want to have a round house.’”
—Mitchell Lee Marks, resident

That panoramic view inspired the home’s unconventional form. Mitch didn’t have strong opinions as to what the house should look like, but as Steely sketched, a circular plan seemed the most appropriate. “A square house, square rooms, they direct the view,” Steely says. “One of the things I was thinking about, and have been thinking about a lot, is how you break that down.”

In the center of the circle, Steely placed a square courtyard, with the living and dining spaces grouped around it. But the house felt unmoored. It was too directionless. So he drew a wedge on top of the circle, imagining it as a lofted office space for the consulting work that Mitch continues to do.

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“Putting that loft up there was key in giving a hierarchy to the form,” Steely says, noting that it also serves as a wayfinder, marking the main entrance to the house.

Eventually, Steely and builder Winton Nicholson began referring to the loft as the “D-fin” because it “looked like an old D-fin skeg on an old log, an old surfboard,” the architect says. “And really, it functions the same way. You’ve got this big, curving shape that wants to move, and you need to start creating direction, you need to start creating control. Having that big, strong skeg at the top just locks it in. It locks it into the wave.”

Mitch’s reaction was more tepid—and a bit puzzled. “Craig showed me this cute little model, and it was round. And I didn’t know what to think,” he says. He mainly wanted something comfortable, livable. He enjoys the simple pleasures of the farm, which is punctuated with a dozen mature mango trees and also produces avocados, papayas, cacao, and coffee. He cooks most of his own meals and makes his own kombucha. He spends his days hanging out with his two cats, Spit and Spat (so named for vomiting in his car), and working on the farm. He appreciates architecture but is far from a connoisseur. He tends to chafe if things get too ostentatious or too prim. “I don’t want stuffy,” he says.

“At night, you don’t see the building—you just see the glowing openings in the wheel.”
—Craig Steely, architect

Mitch eventually came around to the round house, which is supported by steel posts at each corner of the courtyard and at 16-foot intervals around the perimeter; 16-inch-wide glulam beams fan out from the courtyard like spokes in a wheel, tying into curved glulam beams that form a large timber ring. To maximize views, much of the facade is full-height glass notched directly into the curved beam; the rest is clad in black metal. Inside, pops of color are balanced by gray floor tiles and simple tongue-and-groove pine decking. “It could have been a lot more complicated, but it’s not,” Steely says of the 2,400-square-foot structure. “It’s really a simple, old-fashioned house.”

Mitch moved into his new house a week before Hawaii’s governor announced a statewide stay-at-home order. He says he feels nothing but gratitude for the comfort in which he has spent the past year. But the lack of tourists has meant few places to sell his fruit—he’s been selling at below-market rates to a nearby school in the meantime—and even fewer opportunities to plug into local life. Prior to the pandemic, he had been looking forward to joining a paddling club and auditioning for the local community theater.

“March of 2020 was going to be my time to start really getting into the community,” Mitch says. He continues to look forward to when the farm is humming and the house is full of guests. Until then, farming has given him a satisfying way to spend his days. “I can’t feel anything but blessed,” he says.

Project Credits:

Architect of Record: Craig Steely Architecture

Construction: Nicholson Construction

Structural Engineering: Ray Keuning

Landscape Design: Mitchell Marks

Interior Design: Craig Steely Architecture

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