Channeling Frank Lloyd Wright’s conviction that “no house should ever be on a hill…it should be of the hill. Belonging to it,” the architects of Contour 1 set out to create a landform building carved both out of and into its steep hillside site.
Two stone and timber bars stepped into the hillside and linked by a glass entry corridor mimic the contours of the site and separate the home’s shared and private spaces. A courtyard cloistered at their center pushes the private bar up the slope, creating space for the lower half of the home to capture uphill sightlines towards the ridge and bay tree at the site’s southwest corner. Glass apertures on the bars’ four ends usher sunlight into the home and frame unimpeded views to the east and the west, while stone walls extend out from the structures into the landscape, anchoring the house to the hill.
Both bars are carpeted with green roofs, again integrating the structure with its landscape and creating a seamless green blanketed view from above. Throughout the home, the natural material palette incorporates stone, wood, glass, and exposed concrete to subtly stitch the home into its landscape.
PROJECT TEAM:
Landscape Architect: Bernard Trainor + Associates
Civil Engineer: BKF Engineers
Structural Engineer: Daedalus Structural Engineering
View Original