Spiegel Aihara Workshop: Menlo Park

  Menlo Park | 94025
Design by: SAW // Spiegel Aihara Workshop
Photography by: J. Clark/Modern Home Tours

Built: 2013, 3 Bedroom, 3.5 Bathrooms, 4500 Square Feet

This Menlo Park residence explores the suburban housing type through interlocking bars of shared and private program. The composition re-appropriates the traditional forms of the California ranch house and farm tower as tools of environmental performance and social interaction, deployed to create variable density, natural ventilation, solar energy generation, day-lighting, and immersion into the site. The building can effectively shut down various program spaces, allowing for an intimate feeling (and low energy consumption) when inhabited by a single person, but allows for a spacious and integrated configuration for ten. The structure is long, low, and narrow, settling into the tree-lined landscape and allowing yards to surround and permeate each room. A 3-story tower and deck nestles into the sprawling pine trees, providing a unique vantage point of the now suburban land. With basic forms and natural materials, the structure aims to be responsive to the site and respectful of nature and neighborhood.