Entry to the Main House

Beyond the entry gates,  a walled-in patio with a covered cloister welcomes you.  You can see into this patio from the kitchen, dining-room and guest wing.   An intimate garden here, affords the owner a place to grow seasonal flowering plants and to display them for the enjoyment of everyone.  In the garden area is a waiting bench.    It is customary in eastern philosophy to provide the visitor with a place to sit, rest and absorb the spirit of their surroundings, before entering the home.
Three things are provided for the guest:  flowering plants,  poetry or calligraphy and the third,  sculpture or ceramics.  This patio fulfils the first requirement of a gracious host.... 

Connecting the front entry with the garage and the guest rooms is a roofed cloister.   Using this walkway, friends staying in the guest wing have easy access to the front drive without disturbing the household.  With inclement weather,  the garage can be used as a second passage to the great room through the connecting cloister.   Cypress used in the main residence was also applied on the interior walls of the garage and the stone pavers on the garage floor are the same as those in the connecting cloister.  This adds an elegant touch to this area and on arriving, by way of the garage, guests do not feel inconvenienced in the least.

Double doors, shown above, lead into the Great Room.   Two carved glass panels are illuminated in the evening with concealed lighting.  They were made of one inch thick glass with a geometric pattern etched deeply into the surface.  The lace-like quality of the entry permits the light to filter through while still providing security. The effect is like looking through the leaves of a tree, separating, while still permitting vision to the other side.
                                                                                                                                  

Great Room:
In this residence, the design philosophy of Frank Lloyd Wright is most apparent.

The areas in a home should never be a series of boxes connected to each other by door after door.  Spaces should flow together so that moving  through them  becomes an effortless journey or adventure.

Interior architecture in this resi- dence is designed to handle and influence the occupant.  Lets look at the theory.   Arriving at the entry of the great room, you will have passed through the cloister and entry where the overhead is at nine feet.  On entering the great room,  suddenly the ceilings not only go up in height but a series of steps lead down into the living space.

In this manner you create a visual impression which has a psychological impact on anyone entering and standing in the room.

Proportions of the great room are undeniably spacious.  This is  where the designer has to  think in three dimensions.  Explaining  this mental process goes beyond the space of this web-site, but needless to say, there are four walls and everything must tie together visually in this room and must also continue into the exterior architectural elevations.   The use of wood and stone plus the design of strong horizontal elements in the room help to bring everything down to human scale,  and this is as it should be.

Consider the fireplace as a sculpture.  It is made of a series of wood bands with bronze metal inserts. It meets the ceiling with wood moldings in keeping with the giant wood beams.  There are three skylights,  which let shafts of light play down the wall as the sun moves during the day.  The structural system used in this residence was the key to opening up the floor areas and for reducing the number of columns which would normally have been required for internal support.   As you can see the column usually found under the center point of the roof has now been eliminated.   If a support had been required at this location it would have interrupted the beautiful view, of the waterway, through the picture widows.

Great Room...
Looking towards the entry
As you look towards the front doors, you can see the dining area to the left.  The cabinets for dishes and silver  form a low separation from the Great Room thereby dividing the two areas visually without a solid barrier such as a wall being necessary. Cabinets by the dining table were designed using the same cypress as the walls and ceilings.  All wood used is cypress with a hand-rubbed lacquer finish.   The air- conditioning  outlets are built into the ceiling beams and every other grill contains speakers for the music system.   Black granite was chosen for the   cabinet  tops and fireplace hearth. 
The flooring is cherry- wood and starts at the entry and runs throughout all the major rooms of the first floor.

Dining room:
The dining area shown below is strategically placed between two doors from the kitchen.  The first  leads into the butlers' pantry where salads and deserts are prepared, and the second door leads into the kitchen.  I have found that there is no substitute for good planning in the layout of a kitchen.  This is certainly true for the larger residences where the owner is involved with a number of friends and clients who are used to the best five-star restaurants.  Most often, the lady of the house or her helper do the preparation of meals; but in large residences there are many times when the dinners are catered and outside help is brought in to prepare and serve the meal.   It is at these occasions that the proper layout in the kitchen area becomes essential.

One wall of the dining room has a bronze mirror from floor to ceiling.  This has a visual effect of opening up a room.  The other two walls are double doors, one to a garden patio and the other to a terrace.

    Master Den

Off the great room, is a place for the family to relax when dinner is over and the day is fairly complete.  A TV is built into the architecture of the chimney wall and the cabinetry includes video and sound equipment, so that television or movies can be watched with surround-sound adding to the effect.  For  convenience, there is a small concealed bar in a  cabinet at the rear of the room.  The bar unit has running water, refrigerator glasses and storage for any items which might be needed for entertainment. 

Passageways which can be seen in this picture flow off of the great room and main corridor which leads to the bedroom wing.  Even the fireplace is visually connected to the great room.  It is double sided and provides heating not only for the great room but also warmth for the reading room in cooler weather.