Strong on its own, part of the whole.

The site is a remote 40-acre property in the hills outside Santa Rosa, previously reshaped by wildfire. The property forms a compound, organised around an extensive designed landscape that is the defining character of the place.

Studio Graf's response draws the house as a permeable structure that lets the garden move through it. The residence is conceived as a long, low volume raised above the terrain, with the landscape passing freely beneath and continuing on both sides. Inside becomes an extension of the garden rather than a refuge from it. The traditional distinction between building and grounds dissolves.

The landscape is not a setting for the house. It is a fully realised world in its own right, and any residence built on this site had to enter that world as a participant rather than a headline.

The current design direction anchors this idea around a 250-foot linear gesture that responds to the geometry of the surrounding landscape. Sunken living spaces ground the residents in the terrain, expansive glazing brings the surrounding composition into every room, and lattice screens filter the strong California sun into shifting patterns of light through the day. The architecture is drawn to be strong and distinctive on its own terms, without overpowering what surrounds it.

Studio Graf has been developing the architectural concept in close dialogue with the client, exploring a range of formal approaches for the site. This direction is one of several under active development.

The material palette reflects the resilience of the landscape it grew from: cool concrete that echoes the terraced walls of the garden, warm timber, and glass. The result is a house designed not to sit on the land, but to breathe with it, and to belong to the garden as much as the garden belongs to it.