Collection by Moe Alb
A custom wood screen frames a material-rich private beach escape in Crown Point.
Architect Steven Lombardi has integrated yesterday and today—with a nod to tomorrow—in a the renovation of a multi-generational home originally built in the 1950s.
This pair of detached houses on one lot in an urbanized area of San Diego embraces its seaside setting with a series of courtyards that usher in the ocean breeze. The houses are remarkably efficient thanks to a combination of passive and active strategies, including a concrete-board rain screen for temperature regulation and photovoltaic arrays for solar energy.
What differentiates a house designed by architects from a woodland nest built by a robin or a rabbit? That basic, elemental question—and a desire to narrow the gap between the two— inspired the 1,300-square-foot home Hiroshima-based architect Keisuke Maeda designed for a teacher, her two teenage daughters, and their cat in the hills of Onomichi, on the southern end of the Japanese island of Honshu. "It’s a nest that’s dug into the ground and covered with fallen leaves, where inside and outside flow into each other. That seemed right for a house near the woods," says Maeda.
The location on the shores of a small bay means it is sheltered from cold southerly winds. The alpine location provided plenty of inspiration for landscaping, which Ritchie and Kerr elected to keep as minimal as possible, as if the home had landed on its site with as little disturbance or alteration as possible.
The main living area. The home is flanked on the east by a precipitous mountain range named The Remarkables. In summer, the weather gets hot enough for the family to go swimming and boating.
The home is mostly clad in black trapezoidal-profile steel, with cedar boards lining what the owners call the “human spaces”—external passages between buildings. A solar hot water system perches on the roof.
The sunny side of the home is clad in cedar weatherboards and features sleeping quarters on the upper level with living spaces below.
The home is made up of two parts: a rear wing containing the studio and a guest room, and the north-facing living quarters (which, in the southern hemisphere, attract the most sun) overlooking the lake.