Many Delights in a Rethinking of the Ranch-Style Home | Home Design Find
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Many Delights in a Rethinking of the Ranch-Style Home

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Although this is a thoroughly 21st century living room, isn’t there a hint of the suburban American ranch house of the 1960s here too?

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The home in Menlo Park, California by Spiegel Aihara Workshop synthesizes the best of both eras.

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A thick hallway ceiling of solid wood is balanced over a glazed walkway.

Its 21st century stone tiles gives way to a 20th century cliche; the suburban “carpet” of mowed grass.

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The weighty wood ceiling is a far cry from the acoustical fibreboard ceilings of the 1960s, but is designed to achieve the same end, softening sound.

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The low-slung building with its flat transitions between materials is very 60s, yet the minimalism of the wood treatment utterly updates it.

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The design is not attempting to be archly retro, but simply accepting and modernizing the tradition.

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But a surprise: above the kitchen a raised skylight (21st C) gives a breather from the relentless horizontality (20th C) of the ranch home, bringing cool light in to its center.

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From the cool dark shaded kitchen, a view out to the garden – you can almost see the Letraset children playing in the sun.

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At the far end of the wing, the bedroom has all the openness and spare grace of 21st century minimalism.

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The low-slung house is oriented to offer a cool respite from the heat of Menlo Park.

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On the other side of the entry wall, an archetypal walled-off slice of the new suburbs that were still a miracle in the 60s.

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The car is accepted right into the home in typical ranch style.

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Its cross shaped plan gives garden views out both sides of every room.

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The architects have successfully re-appropriated the traditional forms of the California ranch house, but with genuine sincerity, taking the good, and honestly trying to improve on the original.

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