There had been a modest ranch house built into the side of one of the hills of Portola Valley in 1960. At some point, its inhabitants had run out of room and extended it in the only direction they could - out towards the view. Consequentially, this required working against the grain of the simple gabled roof, zigzagging a new volume up from the hip, thereby mashing a vault into a butterfly. Likely without particular intent, the view had become distant, light had to fight its way further in from the perimeter, and the solid stuff in the middle had swelled into a dense, dark core.

SAW first approached the house years later and noticed a latent potential of the structure, not in the floor plan necessarily, but in the ceiling plan. This newer fold, and the fold that had preceded it, were full of grain, expressing the tectonics of boards and beams across different slopes. In this interior renovation, SAW decided to delete as many heavy partitions as possible, turning the roof into a floating wave, woven with layers of existing structural strands and new ones, favoring depth within a structural field over rooms and volumes. New skylights between the rafters, voids within the walls, and bars of program create a gradient of domestic spaces, animated by the changing angles of the sun. Circulation is directed along the roof axis, bringing order to a kinked plan geometry. The spaces now direct the heart of the house toward the spectacular views of the hills and valleys beyond. The rafters tell the tale this house, held apart and amplified just enough to tie things together.


Architecture: SAW (Namhi Kwun, Hyeon Jun Lee, Cheyenne Concepcion, Megumi Aihara & Dan Spiegel)

Photography: Mikiko Kikuyama