Designed by CCS Architecture NY for a San Francisco couple with six children, the property is located inland from the beach town of Aptos, California in the Santa Cruz Mountains. The family desired a setting that would be casual and rustic, and that would incorporate sustainable features to minimize the home’s carbon footprint. Diverse activities were part of the design program, including; partying, cooking, tanning, swimming, archery, horseshoes, gardening, and wood-splitting. The project has 2 primary buildings, plus accessory buildings and recreational components that were designed to work together as a country compound. The 2800-square-foot Main House is composed of a ‘live building’ and a ‘sleep building’ that overlap at their roofs to create a linkage and sheltered outdoor space. The sleep building is slid under the higher roof of the live building. The live building contains the dining, living, and kitchen areas, plus a master suite upstairs. The central kitchen anchors the main space, which is flanked by dining and living. The kitchen island has an eighteen foot long, three inch thick single walnut slab countertop that has wany edges and was cut from a large fallen tree.
