Todd Verwers Architects, an award-winning Copenhagen-based design practice with deep roots in modern, Scandinavian design, has completed construction of a new weekend residence at The Sea Ranch for a former Danish Consul, his wife, and their daughter. The Context The famed Sea Ranch development situated along California’s rugged north coast was innovative in the development of its original 1960’s design guidelines, which dictated a sensitive relationship to the local terrain, vegetation and coastal climate.
The Sea Ranch vernacular style is characterized by harmonious integration with the natural landscape, unornamented, pure geometric building forms, irregular window patterns and locations, as well as extensive use of cedar siding, dark aluminum windows, and copper trim. This house, designed for a Danish consul and his wife, was built as a weekend getaway and a venue for informal entertaining. Sited on a sloping lot which opens to spectacular downslope views over the Pacific Ocean, the house gently backs into an existing grove of redwood trees, thus providing intimacy and a “deep woods” feeling toward the rear of the house. The design embodies a Nordic sensibility to light, material, and lifestyle, while respecting the architectural forms and rustic materiality characteristic of the famed Sea Ranch design tradition.
The Design The Sea Ranch building authority required that the design of the house take its cue from the scale, form, and materials of the adjacent homes, all designed in the late 1960’s by renowned Bay Area architect William Turnbull as a variation on a typical loft theme. The challenge for architect Todd Verwers, graduate of the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, was to efficiently accommodate his clients’ 21st century program within an updated design, to be located on a tight lot and realized within a relatively limited budget. While respecting the scale and volume of the original Turnbull prototype, Verwers’ design represents a radical departure from the Turnbull model in terms of its open spatial reconfiguration, its expansive, strategically-located clerestory windows, and its bright, crisp interiors.
The primary living areas of the house are clearly oriented toward the ocean, and the design maximizes this connection by providing a structural clear span along the ocean-facing façade to minimize the thickness and number of window mullions. The effect is profoundly ethereal, like that of “floating” above the water. Other large windows are positioned along the side and rear façade walls to provide focused views from both living and sleeping areas back into the forest canopy behind the house. Panes of translucent glass provide privacy where needed while not limiting daylight. The “public” areas of the house are flooded with natural light, whereas the more private areas in the rear portion of the house are darker, more cozy and insular in the Sea Ranch design tradition.
The architect was rigorous in limiting the material palette both inside and out in the interest of simplicity and clarity of spatial experience. Finally, the owners furnished the house sparsely with an eclectic mix of mid-century Danish furniture classics and newer furnishings intended to contribute to a comfortable informality to the interiors. Walls are left unadorned in order to accentuate the always-changing interplay of light and surface, and to strengthen focus on the beauty of the surrounding natural environment, which permeates the house.
