Given the narrowness of the site and the proximity of other buildings, the urban row house, with its parallel enclosing side walls and open end walls, was a provocative precedent. At the Cohn residence, the frame is perpendicular to the site and view. The side walls are more solid and less articulated than the front and back walls, which open to the views. This perpendicular orientation affords more complex layering and internal transparency—the sequential revelation of overlapping spaces that engage one another.

The program was distributed on three levels accessed by two overlaid but separate circulation systems. The exterior stair comes up from the autocourt and connects the deck and the bridge to the beach on the second level as well as to the sun deck on the third level. This sequence integrates the building into the topography—it is a building both in the land and on the land.

The interior circulation system, a circular stair that is read as a cylindrical volume that both engages and extends past the frame, is accessed from the entry on the ground level, which also contains the two children’s bedrooms, a playroom, and a guest bedroom. The second level accommodates the kitchen, with direct exterior access, dining, and double-height living space, which opens to a deck extension facing the ocean. The third level contains the master bedroom suite overviewing the living space and a balcony study with direct access to the deck, which terminates the outdoor circulation system.

The house is sited at the top of a gentle slope to take advantage of the panoramic views. The primary public spaces are elevated to the second level. The lower level accommodates the parking and service core, two-and-a-half-story entrance porch, foyer, children’s bedrooms and playroom, which is half a level below grade. The lower level constitutes the base of the “pavilion,” whose “roof” becomes the new datum for the major public space above. The pavilion is supported by a columnar structure that penetrates through the base building and simultaneously with the object building articulates the main volume.

The lower level is zoned by the entry, which separates automobile and service areas from the children’s zone. The entry permits direct access to the pool terrace and changing rooms and is the point of origin of a ramp, the primary circulation device for the house. The half-level landings and the linear circulation experience inherent in the ramp space develop multiple and sequential spatial and view experiences.

The first leg of the ramp parallels the children’s bedrooms, which with their doors and frosted glass interior clerestory windows, are articulated as outdoor entries. This sense of walking past the exterior of a building is heightened by the linear skylight two and a half stories over the children’s corridor and by the use of the cedar siding inside and out. The first landing arrives at the master bedroom, a modulated one- and two-story space. The second landing, above the entry and looking down through the entry portico, is the one-and-a-half-story primary living space with a large deck and outdoor stair extension. The third landing arrives at the study, a balcony over the master bedroom, with its own internal stair reconnecting it to the bedroom below.

The guest suite is reached separately, by a spiral stair from the main entry level, and has its own roof deck with views of the site, pond, and ocean. These multiple vertical circulation strategies contribute to the sectional complexity of the house. The half-level displacements create an overlapping section as complex and interlocked as the interaction between the pavilion frame and the object building.

The uppermost level contains a garage and occupies the top floor of a two-story, detached guesthouse wing, which presents a one-story façade to the street in keeping with the scale of neighboring houses. The remaining four levels of the main house are organized as a cubic volume, situated between two large retaining walls, which follow the natural contours of the site and splay outwards towards the shore.

An exterior stair acts as the primary connecting device between the two wings of the house, and offers a visceral experience of the site’s steep gradient by producing a spatial “tension and release” between narrow, side yard spaces alongside the retaining walls, versus open spaces between outdoor “rooms.” An interior, circular stair winds around an elevator and forms the cylindrical focal point of the house’s massing.

A barrel-vaulted ceiling articulates the living and dining spaces at the topmost level of the main house, and a large deck projects towards the bay to extend the space into the landscape. Other, smaller projections from the house’s main volume towards the bay provide more intimate spaces for dining or leisure, producing a façade which can be read as a hierarchy of varying degrees of enclosure within the tripartite structural scheme. Bedrooms, a study and a two-story play area occupy the intermediate floors, while a gym of the lowest level offers close proximity to an outdoor terrace with lap pool, whose “infinity edge” of water establishes a poetic connection to the bay beyond.

The house’s exterior is clad in gray stained, vertical cedar siding, with a curved standing seam zinc roof. All exterior windows, doors and decks are teak. Exterior terraces are beige/gray flamed limestone pavers and the retaining walls are painted warm white stucco. Interior walls and ceiling are painted plaster; floors are limestone and wide plank, bubinga wood; woodwork and cabinets are lightly stained maple.

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The primary volumetric element of the house, orienting south, west, and north, accommodates the dining room, kitchen/breakfast room, and staff apartment on the ground level; the game room and three children’s bedrooms on the second level; a guest suite, exercise room and a massage room on the third level.

The sauna building/guest house, as well as the pool and terrace, are located on the eastern portion of the site, extending the outdoor spaces and completing the overall site building design strategy.

Compositionally and formally, this house presents the most articulated, hierarchical, and consolidated plan graphic to date, which is further reinforced by its volumetric resolution. The primary sculptural element is the reverse cone at the west end of the circulation spine that anchors and orients the house to its site, as well as to its primary interior spaces.

The massing and solid/void articulation is read as reductive, or the result of carving from an initial solid, rather than additive or assembled, giving the house a density and sculptural presence akin to the earliest beach houses

The second level houses a master bedroom suite, a family study, four children’s bedrooms and a roof deck. The house is the first structure in a phased site development, which will include a boat house, pool house and pool, as well as outdoor sports facilities.

Major exterior materials include buff limestone paving, a translucent curved skylight, Alaskan white cedar siding, mahogany windows and doors and pre-weathered zinc standing seam roofing. The interior features polished concrete floors, mahogany doors and frames and maple cabinets.