Hybrid House can be many things: high-end residence with expensive finishes or first home in a suburb. What makes it unique is that it allows your budget to go further and it’s designed to suit you and your unique needs.
A 4,500 sf high-end residence designed and built in Santa Rosa, California, this building used the metaphor of the owner/sculptor’s tall pottery vessels to create the vertical entry space. Stairs wind up one curving wall and a two-story metal sculpture defines the other. The owners wanted no exterior upkeep (repainting) so metal panels, normally used as roofing, wrap the house.
The first impression of the house emphasizes its horizontal arrangement and suggests a long view to the east. One enters from behind on the uphill side, away from the suggested view. If expectations promise a horizontal and outward experience, the first reality is an inward-focussed, strongly vertical entry space where the owner’s pottery is on display. This space has a 22′ curving, torqued steel wall on one side and a curved staircase and wall on the other. Only after venturing through this space, up the stairs and across a bridge does the long exterior view of the Valley of the Moon reveal itself.