Moksha is home born of optimism and loss, repeated to the point that imagining the future has become a spirited act. This house is as much about those who will never live there as those who will. Interlocking boxes organize program, materially twisting towards the sky, finding unlikely alignments in rotation, rooting into the landscape, and peering over the bay. Complex systems of mass timber, expressive steel frames, and jagged concrete provide material relationships to the landscape, both within and without. The sawtooth concrete board form animates light, softens texture, and hardens against fire. The redwood rainscreen repurposes old growth redwoods, mottled and felled by wildfire, turning another fire’s tragedy into a robust new enclosure.


Architecture & Landscape Architecture: SAW (Dan Spiegel, Megumi Aihara, Adam Strobel, Namhi Kwun, Jeremy Ferguson, Jonah Merris, Dustin Stephens, Sharon Ling & Avery Sell)

General Contractor: James Yu, Interspace

Landscape Contractor: Jose Gonzalez, JG Universal

Concrete Contractor: Palo Alto Concrete

Civil Engineer: Lea & Braze

Structural Engineering: Daedalus Structural Engineering

Reclaimed Timber: Arborica

Mass Timber: Kalesnikoff

Geotechnical Engineer: Romig Engineering

Photos courtesy: Joe Fletcher

Landscape photos: SAW