Unlikely Eichler| Palo Alto - California | 2021

Architects: Gustave Carlson Design
Original Archiitect: Joseph Eichler (1971)
Interior Designers: Atelier Davis
General Contractor: Flegels Construction Co., Inc.
Client: Private
Photographers: David Duncan Livingston

Even in Palo Alto—the city where the highest number of Eichlers in the US are located—this project stands out. It was custom-commissioned by John S. Lynd an architect and personal friend of the pioneering real estate developer Joseph Eichler, and is uniquely located on a flag lot that overlooks the 18th hole of the Palo Alto Hills Country Club.

For our firm Gustave Carlson Design, the home is the story of stewardship. Carlson wanted the original bones of the house to shine through and carry the dwelling into the future. Specifically, he wanted to respect the legacy of the California modern architectural experience—and this home’s strong historical pedigree—but with a modern colorful twist of layers and patterns brought out in both the cabinetry and interior finishes. In order to enhance the sense of space, Carlson removed unoriginal partitions and cleaned up the interior spaces, while creating a large custom aluminum framed skylight in the atrium that completely transforms the living area, flooding it with natural light. The skylight was craned
into place on-site and allows the atrium to feel exterior. The Atrium is the center spine of the house, where the piano and reading books and lounge space are located. The walls are an exterior western red cedar siding, and have interior Fleetwood sliding glass doors so that you feel like you are outside, while adding habitable square footage to the house.

The siding, the doors and windows all play a role in the architectural narrative. The exterior of the house was resided using Shou Sugi Ban Accoya barn wood vertical siding. The front door to the Atrium is a custom-designed dutch door by Gustave Carlson. The windows and door are aluminum by Fleetwood. The house is also brought up to the 21st century with a 41-panel solar voltaic system with battery backup and charging stations.

There's a unifying palette of blues, corals, and yellows (a sort of a play on the traditional primary colors) that can be found throughout the home, as well as a materials palette of western red cedar paneling to make the interior feel like a California exterior, cork flooring, unique tile patterns with colored grout, and custom terrazzo that provides a literal, and figurative sense of grounding.

Adapting the house for its current stewards meant creating a warm, relaxed and welcoming family home for the couple and their four daughters, and paying homage to the couples' European ties. To reconfigure and design a family home for an active family of 6, we needed to add square footage to make the house a 5 bedroom, while retaining the original Eichler shape and sense of modern style, functionality, and indoor/ outdoor California lifestyle. The new primary bathroom suite was added to the house by building a retaining wall of board form concrete that pushed the house into the existing hillside. The addition created a primary bathroom where the room is accessible from his wardrobe on the right side of the room, and her wardrobe from the left side of the room. The room contains a tub
and shower area that receives light from windows overlooking an outdoor private courtyard space. We also added a wine cellar and a mudroom with custom cabinetry designed by Gustave Carlson Design pays homage to the husband's British roots.

Significantly, the homeowners are patrons of emerging women artists in particular, and their collection contains about 90 works, including a mural by Mariel Capanna. Completed during the artist's five-week residency, the mural was done in the centuries-old fresco-secco technique. The mural is located
along a hallway that Carlson designed for that sole purpose- a hallway that enters the “girls’ wing” of the home so that the children can walk through the art; In the project room, Carlson designed a Donald Judd-inspired, wall-mounted storage unit, and in the Primary Suite custom designed cabinetry and wall ledges for the rotating “art gallery.”

This house merges architecture and art—an outcome that Joseph Eichler would have intended, since he was a pioneer in educating all of us of how a family lives in a home as a simple signature of style.