2020
THE MIDDLE HALF
MILL VALLEY, CA
Often when thinking about preserving a thing—a structure, an object, a landscape, a city—one talks about preserving its “heart” or it's “core.” But in this case it was the opposite—we were trying to preserve the periphery, while completely reimagining the core.
The Middle Half dramatically reconfigures an existing 1962 Mill Valley home from a segmented series of small rooms with a congested core to a diffuse open plan residence with a central axis and diagonal intersection. Drawing a clear slightline from the front door to the suspended rear deck and valley views beyond, the space is punctuated by skylights that bring in soft light and passagways that lead to private living spaces. Like the interior spaces, the landscape design has a volumetric concept, defined by geometries shared with the architectural design. Outside, critical building elements—the steel and wood beams and columns—break free of the constraints of the interior walls to carve out and define volumes of exterior space, framing views as pictorial scenes.
Architecture: SAW
Landscape Architecture: SAW
Interior Design: Kina Ingersoll
Photos courtesy Mikiko Kukuyama