If ever you wanted to model your home after a retail store, that retail store would doubtless be of the Apple variety. And if you want your home to look like an Apple store, what better way to do so than by hiring the same architecture firm behind more than 70 of these sleek masterpieces? Of course, you’ll have to have the means to hire Bohlin Cywinski Jackson, but should your pockets be deep enough, you can get this renowned firm to design your home, and it might end up looking something like this 5,360-square-foot residence in Los Altos, California.
Located in a suburb of Silicon Valley (because really, who else has both the desire and the bank account to pull off this kind of project?), the home is a 21st-century interpretation of a ranch house, and it recently took home a 2017 AIA Housing Award. As Fast Company noted, the chief challenge of designing the home lay in creating “a quiet refuge while embracing outdoor living.”
As BCJ notes on its website, the home was actually designed completely around an existing Japanese maple tree. This single plant served as a source of inspiration and signified the “relationship shared between residence and site.” The light-filled residence boasts floor-to-ceiling windows, which “frame views of the diverse flora surrounding the home.”
That said, in order to maximize privacy, glass is used sparingly in the side of the house that faces the busy street. But in the living room, a full wall of sliding glass doors make it seem as though residents are equal parts in and outside, while inhabitants of the master bedroom can hear “the trickling of water and quiet rustling of trees coming from the meditation garden just outside.”
Every room of the house features a view, drawing inhabitants’ (and jealous visitors’) eyes outside to a linear pool and a board-formed concrete garden wall. That wall, by the way, connects the main home with the guest house.
Citing a “natural, crisp palette,” BCJ notes that the home’s owners opted for simplicity and tranquility in design, which led to the decision to use a variety of wood, exposed structural steel, and polished concrete floors in the design. All in all, it’s a minimalist design that promises to be “both calm and restful for the family to enjoy for many years to come.”
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