A warm and cohesive family home

Designing an extended dwelling for a family of five on a relatively small site with numerous constraints – such as zoning and neighbors’ right to light – is a daunting challenge for any architect. However, the architectural firm Studio Vara rose to the challenge when a young couple commissioned a similar project in Palo Alto, California.

Tasked with building a residence for a young family of five, Studio Vara took on the challenge of maximizing the use of a small corner lot in old Palo Alto, California, while pursuing an ambitious goal. The result is a Rubik’s Cube-shaped house whose interconnected spaces extend outwards, creating a set of intimate yet spacious zones. The designers created three superimposed volumes that move in and out of view as they rise, countering mass and bringing lightness to the structure. The first floor is built around a small open-air courtyard. This choice not only floods the interior with light, reinforcing the airy aspect of the open plan, but also blurs the boundaries between inside and outside, introducing some of the lush foliage of the garden, around which the kitchen, dining and living areas follow one another. An elegant, transparent staircase leads to the upper floor, where bedrooms and bathrooms are spread across a more conventional succession of independent spaces. A basement, generously lit by skylights and openings, completes the living areas, housing a living room, a gym and a guest bedroom. Combining comfort and lightness, the architects ingeniously balanced open and closed spaces, different materials and volumetric compositions throughout the design. From the street, the dwelling appears to float slightly above the ground, thanks to the slight elevation of the second floor and the concealment of the basement beneath the terraces and wing walls that surround the perimeter. Overall, the exterior appears as a composition of stacked volumes, an effect accentuated by the use of a different principal material for each level: plank-formed concrete for the basement, cedar and larch cladding for the central landing and dark-panelled zinc for the upper floor.