The Approach
Client Brief
The client, a returning homeowner familiar with our design approach, sought to create a resort-style residence that would serve as both a family sanctuary and a gathering place for guests. The home needed to provide self-contained amenities across three levels, including entertainment, relaxation, and family living, while blending seamlessly into its natural environment. A central request was that the house embody a contemporary design language while feeling timeless, soulful, and rooted in craftsmanship.
Site Challenges
The site presented both opportunity and constraint:
Expansive golf course views formed the natural backdrop, demanding a design that captured and framed the landscape.
The lot was wide but shallow, restricting depth and dictating a long, linear building form.
A sewer easement ran along one side and into the rear yard, further limiting buildable area.
Golf course association restrictions imposed additional design constraints regarding scale and placement.
These challenges required a solution that maximized view corridors, protected existing natural beauty, and turned limitations into design drivers.
Design Response
The home was conceived as a long, elegant contemporary home that embraced the width of the property while respecting its shallow depth. Organized across three floors, the design strategy allowed the family to inhabit the landscape in layered ways:
Terrace Level (Resort Core): A walkout lower floor designed as the recreational heart of the home. It houses resort-style amenities for both family and guests, blending interior leisure rooms with outdoor terraces and pool access.
Main Floor (Family + Views): An open plan anchors family life here, with living, dining, and kitchen spaces oriented to capture uninterrupted views of the pool and golf course. Indoor-outdoor connections are strengthened by transitional zones such as covered porches and sliding wall systems.
Upper Floor (Children’s Retreat): Bedrooms and a large shared playroom establish an independent, light-filled environment for the children, connected to outdoor living through a broad porch overlooking the backyard and beyond.
Natural materials — stone, wood, and finely crafted details — root the contemporary design in timelessness and craftsmanship, ensuring that the home feels of its place rather than imposed upon it.
Design Principles in Action
Our guiding principles of design were embedded throughout the process:
What the Eye Sees, What the Heart Feels – Long horizontal lines frame the golf course, while intimate corners within the home elicit warmth and comfort.
Emotional Response – Dramatic light and shadow are achieved through careful orientation, overhangs, and transitions between volumes.
Tone and Comfort – Spaces were scaled intentionally: expansive living areas balanced by more intimate nooks, all tuned to the family’s rhythms.
Emotional Identity – Guests immediately sense the family’s values: hospitality, joy, and connection to nature.
Material and Craft – A layering of textures (stone, wood, glass, metal) evokes solidity and permanence.
Spatial Variety – Contrasts of tall and low, open and enclosed, indoor and outdoor provide balance and drama.
Historical Reference – Subtle nods to timeless architectural precedents ground the contemporary form in a lineage of design that endures.
Playfulness and Surprise – Unexpected moments, like sculptural staircases and crafted detail, create delight.
Human Touch – Fine craftsmanship, art, and family heirlooms are integrated throughout.
Outcome
The final home is a living bridge between structure and landscape — a place where family life, hospitality, and timeless design coexist. It achieves the client’s vision of resort-style living while respecting the unique constraints of the property. The use of a 2’ x 2’ modular grid ensured efficiency in design and construction, minimizing waste while reinforcing a disciplined elegance in form.
Lessons Learned
Constraints can inspire creativity. The shallow site and easements, once seen as limitations, became the catalyst for a long linear design that maximizes views and celebrates horizontality.
Emotional design matters. Beyond programmatic needs, the integration of light, material, and space created a home that feels alive, personal, and enduring.
Integration of site and home is key. By designing to the property, not against it, the project enhanced rather than diminished the existing beauty.
Principles provide consistency. The family’s design ethos — from light and materiality to playfulness and craft — ensured a cohesive result, making the home not just a structure but a soulful experience.