This newsletter is a part of our newest Design particular phase, about areas impressed by means of nature.
When Ben and Rebekah Shaffer started on the lookout for a 2d house that might really feel like an international clear of their day-to-day truth in Silicon Valley, they weren’t positive about which path to take.
In the beginning, “we had been considering lets in finding one thing within the woodland someplace,” mentioned Mr. Shaffer, 44, an commercial dressmaker at Apple. Then they started musing about a spot close to Lake Tahoe, which is more or less 4 hours northeast in their number one place of dwelling, a space in San Jose, Calif., that was once designed by means of Joseph Eichler.
However with 3 youngsters — Brooklyn, now 15; Liam, 12; and Naomi, 11 — who would have to sit down during the long automobile shuttle, that didn’t appear possible.
The couple recalibrated their seek and seemed for a space at the coast that was once inside of an hour in their number one house. In the beginning, the purpose looked like a pipe dream. However then, Mr. Shaffer mentioned, “we discovered this superb neighborhood referred to as Pajaro Dunes,” a hotel in Watsonville, Calif., about an hour south, the place dozens of independently owned, quirky midcentury fashionable properties are pressed up towards the sea.
After traveling a couple of homes, they discovered what they sought after: a 1,500-square-foot house with an angular roof, hunkered down within the grassy dunes, only a skipping stone’s throw clear of the surf. “It gave the impression in reality amusing: simply this extraordinary picket pyramid,” Mr. Shaffer mentioned.
The Shaffers purchased it in September 2017 for $1.55 million and started making plans an intensive renovation. The home, which was once designed in 1968 by means of George Cody, an architect, had received an award from the native bankruptcy of the American Institute of Architects when it was once constructed. However greater than 50 years later, the inner was once old-fashioned, and worse, stepping within virtually felt like coming into a tree trunk.
With partitions covered in cedar shingles and extra wooden paneling overlaying the ceilings, “it was once so darkish,” mentioned Ms. Shaffer, 45, an internal dressmaker.
In spite of the home’s attainable for open sightlines to the water, the roof at the aspect dealing with the sea additionally terminated about 5 toes off the sand, obscuring a lot of the view.
Searching for lend a hand, the couple talked to Daniel Gomez, a spouse at Fuse Architects close to Santa Cruz. “Within, you needed to duck down or take a seat in reality low simply to look this little peek of ocean,” Mr. Gomez mentioned. “In speaking with Ben and Rebekah, the query was once, How will we have interaction that view higher with out completely changing the size of the undertaking and the way it suits inside the surroundings?”
Over the next months, they deliberate an overhaul with the development corporate Hagen Colbert that retained the unique footprint of the home however made key architectural adjustments to open it up.
Most importantly, the workforce adjusted the roofline the place the home faces the sea to permit for taller image home windows. Now the glass field containing the eating room seems to protrude into the sand and pops up upper than the principle roof, taking pictures unfettered perspectives of water and sky. The renovation additionally added extra home windows, underneath shorter eaves, to the lounge and number one bed room, so those areas virtually appear to spill out into the dunes.
The workforce changed the weathered cedar shingles at the external of the home with a black standing-seam steel roof and black-stained vertical cedar siding. “We virtually made it Darth Vader’s Pizza Hut,” Mr. Shaffer mentioned, noting with amusing that he sought after the home to seem one thing like a bunker.
When other folks way the house, then again, a cutaway finds an front covered in hotter, herbal cedar. And after they step within, they input a vibrant, white house flooded with gentle from the enlarged home windows and a skylight positioned the place the ceiling soars to its pyramidal top above the kitchen.
“It’s that complete adventure of enjoy,” Mr. Shaffer mentioned. Designing the home was once “similar to my paintings at Apple,” he added, “and desirous about how other folks way and engage with product.”
Similar to a smartphone, the home crams so much right into a small bundle. “We adjusted partitions right here and there to be in reality sensible and environment friendly in regards to the house we needed to paintings with,” Mr. Shaffer mentioned. “We needed to take into accounts what we wanted for our circle of relatives of 5, in addition to the facility to produce other households stick with us.”
That imaginative and prescient ended in 3 compact bedrooms and two bogs, together with person who doubles as a laundry room. Wasted house within the kitchen was once rehabilitated by means of making a hidden garage cupboard inside the island and a corner for footwear.
On best of white-oak ground, the couple positioned spartan preparations of furnishings, together with items by means of the designers Kieran Kinsella and Stephen Kenn, who’re their pals, and a couple of pieces Mr. Shaffer designed and had made (aspect tables for the principle bed room and a lounge espresso desk).
For the reason that space was once completed remaining summer time, it has flaunted its skill to welcome a crowd. “A couple of weeks in the past, I had the design workforce from Apple in the market for an offsite,” when about 20 other folks descended at the assets, Mr. Shaffer mentioned.
And, because the Shaffers have showed, when your own home is correct at the seashore, internal dimensions are much less vital than what’s out of doors.
“We would have liked the herbal surroundings to be the focal point,” Ms. Shaffer mentioned. “With the sand dunes, the grasses and the sea past, it’s simply spell binding.”
