Designed by four friends – architect James Leng, development director Natasha Sadikin, Carnegie Mellon professor Juney Lee and HoK principal Hoang Nguyen – the 148-square-metre residence is co-owned by six people, each with fractional access to a sanctuary that would otherwise be beyond reach.Clad in black-stained, rough-sawn Douglas fir plywood panels, the house appears to snake through the landscape: a low-slung composition of four interconnected volumes nestled against a riparian corridor studded with aged firs. Its siting draws on Halprin’s sectional sketch depicting a sequence of ecologies traveling from the Pacific Ocean – from the headlands to the meadow, to the woodland ridge and then down to the Gualala River. Inside, the Ocean Room wraps its inhabitants in a built-in banquette and opens west to coastal views, where ocean haze softens the daylight. The Garden Room acts as a threshold between inside and out – a walled courtyard bounded by sliding doors that dissolve the house into the landscape. At the centre, the kitchen anchors the plan as a communal hearth; it is the largest open area where light slips through awning windows and lingers into late afternoon. Off the courtyard, the studio pavilion faces the meadow’s dusk glow – a room for solitude and creative work as evening gathers. To move through the house is to experience the day itself: morning on the ocean, noon in the sheltered courtyard, dusk in the meadow.
