Joe Fletcher Atop a ridge in the Santa Lucia mountains of Carmel, California, an oak tree stands elevated above the fog and wrapped at its base in this ranch retreat. The weekend home’s design grew around the 100-year-old Valley Oak to form a horseshoe-shaped house that gathers ridgeline views of Oak, Madrone, and Redwood groves at its exterior and nestles around the tree at its center. The home’s orientation offers both the shade of the oak canopy in the courtyard and the sun flowing into the great room at the house’s rear façades. This modern take on a traditional ranch home offers contemporary materials and landscaping to a classic typology. From the main entry in the courtyard, one enters the home’s great room and immediately experiences the dramatic westward views across the 70 foot pool at the house’s rear. In this expansive public area, programmatic needs flow and connect - from the kitchen, whose windows face the courtyard, to the dining room, whose doors slide seamlessly into walls to create an outdoor dining pavilion. The primary circulation axes flank the internal courtyard, anchoring the house to its site and heightening the sense of scale by extending views outward at each of the corridor’s ends. Guest suites, complete with private kitchen and living room, and the garage are housed in auxiliary wings connected to the main house by covered walkways. Building materials including pre-weathered corrugated steel cladding, buff limestone walls, and large aluminum apertures, and the interior palette of cedar-clad ceilings, oil-rubbed steel, and exposed concrete floors soften the modern aesthetics into a refined but rugged ranch home.

Intense Photography

Fu-Tung Cheng, CHENG Design • Front Pivot Door, House 6 concrete and wood home House 6, is Cheng Design’s sixth custom home project, was redesigned and constructed from top-to-bottom. The project represents a major career milestone thanks to the unique and innovative use of concrete, as this residence is one of Cheng Design’s first-ever ‘hybrid’ structures, constructed as a combination of wood and concrete. Photography: Matthew Millman

Photo by David Dietrich. Carolina Home & Garden Magazine, Summer 2017

Benjamin Benschneider

Chris Snook

This unique custom iron door features a Charcoal finish, 60/40 pivot split, and detailed wrought iron lines.

Dramatic front entry with exterior water feature.

As the clouds change color and are in constant motion along the coastline, the house and its materials were thought of as a canvas to be manipulated by the sky. The house is neutral while the exterior environment animates the interior spaces.

copper mango

Ron Tan Photographer

Architecture by Jon King @ Design King; Photo by Richard Glover.

The main entrance door 7 feet wide and 10 feet high, clad with veneers of vintage teak from Burma, not just appreciated the elegance of the fore frame, but also adhered to the clients’ anthropometric requisites. The exquisite hand- grip was made from scrap wood which camouflaged with the door. Purnesh Dev Nikhanj

Tom Blanchford

Fotos: Stephan Baumann ( http://www.bild-raum.com/) Entwurf: baurmann.dürr Architekten

Contemporary House in Mexico City Architect: Elsa Ojeda Photos: Kika Studio