Wonder and Wood in a Modern Carmel Residence
Carmel-by-the-Sea (often called just Carmel), a little town on California’s Monterey Peninsula, is known as much for its own golf because of its natural beauty. Chicago’s Dirk Denison Architects tapped to this beauty in a house the company designed on a narrow website overlooking Carmel Bay and the Pacific Ocean to get a retired couple looking to downsize. Wood, glass and steel combine to create something modern yet superbly integrated to its natural and built context. This ideabook excursions the house, from the curb to the roof and just about everything in between.
at a Glance
Location: Carmel-by-the-Sea, California
Size: 2,600 square feet
That’s intriguing: The first floor is oriented about a semienclosed courtyard, and the second floor is dedicated to a meditation and yoga area.
Dirk Denison Architects
Given the high value of land from town, a stone’s throw from the most costly public golf course in the nation (Pebble Beach: $495 to get 18 holes as I write this), the narrow loads are flipped 90 degrees to the coast. This maximizes the number of plenty with Pacific frontage, but it also orients homes to the sun, something which we’ll see Denison took advantage of in the layout of the house.
Here we’re looking at the home’s western front. The garage is tucked underneath the first floor, and over it we can observe a little room popping over the roofline.
Dirk Denison Architects
In the driveway, visitors and residents walk along a route on the south side which ascends into the front doorway. The wood siding — the very prominent aspect of the road frontage — continues here. Prior to reaching the front door, one goes through a gate made from wood fins and steel, a hint of things to come.
Dirk Denison Architects
The majority of the 2,600-square-foot residence is on the first floor. The distances overlook a courtyard covered with a glass roof and available on the side (directly) via deep-set fins of steel and mahogany. These vertical pieces allow for mild, breezes and views if seen from front, but when seen at an angle, privacy is maintained.
Here we’re awaiting the master bedroom (notice the opened wall between the courtyard and bedroom) from the entrance and living area.
Dirk Denison Architects
Bamboo and yet another tier of wood fins include more privacy. Here we’re looking from just outside the courtyard’s wood fins (notice the border of the glass roof on top) toward the entrance gate.
Dirk Denison Architects
Here we are looking at the exterior of the courtyard, along the path from the entrance gate into the master bedroom. There is very little in the way of yard which can be found on the lot, but every last piece of it’s closely enhanced with plantings or pavings. The Asian influence is readily evident in this view of the fins, bamboo and stepping stone.
Dirk Denison Architects
In this view of the courtyard, we’re looking from the master bedroom toward the living area and entrance. In the foreground is a Japanese ofuro (tub) installed for viewing the night sky. Asian layout influences come across from the vertical screens and in elements like the bathtub.
Dirk Denison Architects
As we step inside, it’s clear how the vertical wood fins produce a structural rhythm that is replicated throughout, even if the walls are strong. There are indications of Frank Lloyd Wright inside this repetition, in addition to from the built-in sofas on the right and left. The requisite Eames Lounge Chair sits in the front of this fireplace.
Here we’re looking from the living space, near the front of the house, back toward the entrance (the glass corner in the middle-right portion of the photo) and the courtyard beyond. With the sliding doors between the insides and courtyard open, the first floor is just one enormous, open space, perfect when ocean breezes aren’t too trendy.
Dirk Denison Architects
The vertical fins also act as space dividers, in this instance between the living area and the kitchen. As noticed in the previous picture, this display separates the two spaces visually when seen from an angle, but a frontal view like this one is quite open.
The fireplace serves just like a hinge of sorts: To the left the chimney are clerestory (the windows from the entrance route seen before), but on the right the windows are large. These windows are raised over the path and drive for solitude and set back with a little terrace (accessibility to it’s visible on the ideal border of the photo) that faces the Pacific.
Dirk Denison Architects
The galley kitchen continues the ease of materials — wood and, rather than steel, granite tops which are nevertheless dark like the steel particulars. The line of this kitchen finishes from the breakfast room (no formal dining room is included), which looks to the ocean.
Dirk Denison Architects
The first floor might be oriented into the courtyard, but I really could observe the breakfast area becoming among the owners’ favorite spots. It’s comfy, it’s well-integrated built-in seats and it’s that opinion — the trees in the foreground and the water beyond are sights hard to tire of.
Dirk Denison Architects
The brief ends of this courtyard are capped from the living area and master bedroom. Just off the corridor linking those two spaces is a little office, revealed here, that overlooks the courtyard. On the corridor side of this wood fins is a large opening with sliding windows in the open place. These enable cross ventilation when desired.
Dirk Denison Architects
Just off the corridor from the workplace, a doorway leads to an exterior stair into the meditation area. A couple of tatami mats are on the ground, and there’s a guest mattress, so the room can double as a guest bedroom (behind us is a compartmentalized bath set). In the front of the built-in chairs is an elevator, an important element contemplating the clients are elderly.
A porch away from the meditation and yoga space overlooks the Pacific. But on days where going outside is not desirable, a stunning scooped skylight provides views of the treetops, stars and skies.
Dirk Denison Architects
We end our tour on the second-floor porch overlooking the Pacific, a 180-degree view from where we started.
It echoes the breakfast nook downstairs, and it reveals how Denison made some thing special in every room of the house. It is not just about the courtyard; it’s about the expertise of every space and how it relates to the trees, sky and water around it.