Work: Selected Work: Knights Valley Ranch - Lookout Residence

Sonoma County, California 

1250SF Estate 

Inspired by the fire watchtowers in the Pacific Northwest, this modest and luxurious residence are three programatic cubes, two housed with glass on all four sides and the other juxtaposed with board formed concrete, sit on this site with an open and light footprint.  

In conjunction with the roots of a small fire lookout this large ranch in Sonoma County, called for a distinctly different residence.  

Traditionally a large tract of land would have a grandiose palace built on it – Philip Johnson and Mies Van Der Rohe redefined that palace as the intimate villa. A new typology is therefore created, where the virtues of urban and rural life are being combined.  

We are creating a ‘modulated’ pattern of living spaces – both interior and exterior – that will respond to both of those virtues.  

These virtues blur the formality and informality, the grid and the garden, trellis and roof, picturesque and classical, urbane and primitive.  

Just as the firetower steals from the utilitarian nature of the watchtower, the lookout residence steals ideas from the commercial world of the urbane, and the rural world of the country to create something that is one with the land and living.  

A vocabulary of formality and informality with traditional forms in conjunction with vernacular forms. Columns, roofs, and garden only separated with glass becomes more powerful then something LARGE and cumbersome….juxtaposed to this lightness is a heavy concrete box – all of which will be thin and small footprints on the larger landscape.  

Thus the creation of the “Lookout House”………