This weekend home in California is totally prefab, which means easy construction, and it looks amazing! It was designed by Marmol Radziner and trucked onto a remote Northern California site to avoid all the paint connected with difficult building processes. Deep overhangs provide shade and protection from rain, so the owners can leave their doors open year-round and hang out on their 70-foot-long deck even in inclement weather. The materials are very simple and replaceable: concrete floors and metal siding.
A 9.5-foot-tall shade cloth curtain in the foreground seals off the entire length of the house when the couple is away, keeping the heat out of the interior and preventing accidental bird suicides against the floor-to-ceiling glass walls. These walls help to merge the indoors zones with outdoors, as the owners wanted an easy access to the outside.
Located just off the kitchen, this room was originally designed for dining but the owners mostly prefer to eat outside or at their casual Caesarstone-topped kitchen island. Today the space serves as a sunny reading spot and guest room, with a convertible futon and a set of leather-and-steel Paulistano armchairs from Design Within Reach.
The Mikado 2 sofa by Hans Hopfer for Roche Bobois is a bright and cheery centerpiece in the otherwise sedate living room. The nubby wool rug warms up the expanse of concrete. Huge sliding doors open the house to the outdoors and virtually double the living space.
Passionate cooks, the owners installed a Mugnaini wood-fired oven in their kitchen and had a custom fireplace-barbecue built into the concrete block wall on their deck. Beneath the grill they store oak firewood collected from their property.
On the whole, the inner décor is modern and rather colorful to connect the home with the nature outside. There are many eye-catching details including a bold sofa or bean bag chairs outside, and they make a simple prefab house look awesome. Everything here is aimed at pleasing the owners and their passions, and it isn’t surprising that they are going to live here after the retirement.
Though the owners are landscape architects, they took an intentionally hands-off approach to their own land, which is part of the 1,800-acre Long Valley Ranch, a former cattle ranch. They wanted nothing in the landscape to be edible or pretty, nothing to attract animals to the house. Nevertheless, they’ve spotted plenty of fauna thanks to motion-activated “trail cams” they use to spy on local wildlife.
