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Now positioned as they are at the top of the home, the living room and dining room have ten-foot high ceilings and wide open views of the water.

“We kept coming to the dog beach and driving past this house until, one day, we decided to take a look.” Cheryl, who works in tech, is perched on a banquette built cleverly into the narrow deck that skirts the home’s new north-facing wing, wide open to the winter sun.

In the living room, a Stûv fireplace sits near Lori’s favorite place to paint. “We made the southeast corner glass, because that’s where the best view is,” says BCJ principal Ray Calabro.

In the living room are a sectional by American Leather for Room & Board, an Eames lounge chair and ottoman, and a custom floor lamp and coffee table by Jeremy Clark and Ed Haynes.

Living, dining, and kitchen spaces flow into one another in the soaring great room. Here, the Sacramento firm placed new, polished concrete slabs over the original ones to alleviate unsightly cracks.

Sunken Living Room

The sunken living room features a multifunctional piece of built-in furniture that integrates a sofa, sound system, and television, and also contains a "secret door" that leads to a wine cellar. "[We incorporated this] as a clin d’oeil to the midcentury tradition of built-in work stations and bookshelves," says Morales.

The pool and fire pit in the courtyard are at the heart of the home. The olive trees and native Ironwood trees planted around these spaces soften the rectilinear architecture.

“The pitched ceilings and ribbon of clerestory windows make the interior feel more spacious than it is,” notes Gooden.

"The main spaces of the home are flooded with natural light because the homeowners wanted to capture the views of the mountain and have seamless indoor-outdoor living,

Wood Marsh Architecture brings a sculptural aesthetic to a holiday escape in Melbourne, Australia. It opens up with an internal courtyard and orients to the rear, where an outdoor pool area overlooks the broader landscape. A sweeping deck follows the site’s natural slope to a pool area screened by a curved low masonry wall that nods to the building’s prevailing form.

Sunset photo by Tomoko Matsubayashi

The family’s pristine pool gleams under a pastel sky.

Escalante Escape exterior

"They desperately needed more space for their soon-to-be growing family,