When a Stanford University professor, a design thinking pioneer, sought to remodel one of the university’s modest faculty homes, it was inevitable that the process – a deeply personal collaboration — and the project would be unlike any other.
In reworking the compartmentalized floor plan of the original 1970s home, the team sought to distill the design into experiences central to day-to-day life — workshop, living area, and bedroom. From the street, the house is curiously simple at first glance: a stealth ranch-style home, paired back to the essential lines of its suburban vernacular and painted shadow grey. New features are expressed as subtly disorienting counterpoints — a large, concealed pivoting front door, a curved protrusion screening a bedroom patio, and an abstracted “barn” workshop addition.
Staying within the existing footprint, the design simplifies and opens up the interiors: A bedroom blends into a kitchen, which blends into living rooms both inside and out. Minimal details and neutral finishes anticipate an evolving composition of the client’s art and design collection, including custom pieces by Ettore Sottsass. The courtyard once closed off from the house, is now its undisputed heart.
The home’s open and connected spaces ultimately flow to the client’s workshop, a new separate structure dedicated to unbounded exploration. The shop’s industrial frame, wrapped in wood and glass, offers a clever reply to local pitched-roof mandates while also providing a raw and tough space that is ready for anything. Outside, a landscape of drought-tolerant plantings resides in playful dialogue with the home.
Category:Residential AdditionsYear:2019Location:Stanford, California, USAArchitects:Jensen ArchitectsLead Architect: Mark Jensen, FAIADesign Team: Mark Jensen, Margarita Urquiza, Chris Kalos; Project Team: Yusheen Yang, Ryan Golenberg; Collaborating, Designer: Johanna GrawunderClient: David KelleyPhotographer: Matthew Millman
