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“A dry California meadow conceals most of the house from the street side. There is only a line of clerestory windows visible above ground, and the monolithic concrete tower, which grounds the project,” says architect Samantha Mink of the design of her family home. -
Both indoors and out, concrete passageways quite literally immerse you within the landscape. Nowhere is this more dramatic than in the pool channel under the waterfall, which leads from outdoors into the sanctuary. -
Both indoors and out, concrete passageways quite literally immerse you within the landscape. Nowhere is this more dramatic than in the pool channel under the waterfall, which leads from outdoors into the sanctuary. -
Both indoors and out, concrete passageways quite literally immerse you within the landscape. Nowhere is this more dramatic than in the pool channel under the waterfall, which leads from outdoors into the sanctuary. -
“To enter the house, you descend into the ground, and open a large concrete door,” says Samantha of the arrival experience. “The door’s heft is a reminder that you are leaving one world and entering another.” -
Water is integral to the experience of the home, not only underground in the tower but also along the front of the structure. -
That the pool abuts the building was carefully considered: it offers evaporative cooling in Ojai’s hotter months. Samantha also loves how light refracts and reflects off its surface into the interior spaces. -
Off-shutter concrete means the building benefits from the material’s thermal mass, which helps maintain a mild interior temperature. “The south-facing windows are shielded from the sun by the eaves in summer,” says Samantha. -
“Architecture should be fun,” says Samantha, whose inspiration for the pool came from the nostalgia of a swim-up bar at a hotel she holidayed at with her family as a child. -
Minimalism Meets Magic in this Californian Hideaway -
Sunken spaces repeat throughout the interior, encouraging you to take in the views of the garden from water level. -
In this low-slung, single-storey, inventive take on Desert Modernism, all rooms offer panoramas of the garden, with an ancient oak as a focal point. -
“Wood is functional and practical to make things from – it’s just honest,” says Samantha of her minimalist interiors, in which she pairs Douglas fir with white oak. -
Architectural details add interest indoors. -
A kitchen alcove houses a concealed extractor fan and a stovetop set into a durable concrete counter. -
While the house itself is sunken, cosy spaces indoors sink you even further into the ground. -
The concrete volume along the living structure’s back side is home to many practical spaces – like this utility kitchen area. The material’s richly textured surface is both offset and warmed by its pairing with timber cabinetry. -
“Each space is given a name on the home’s documentation – parents’ bedroom, father’s office, brother’s room,” explains Samantha, who designed the house with her family firmly in mind. “It is – or it attempts to be – a manifestation of my idea of what a family is… what our family is.” -
“Each space is given a name on the home’s documentation – parents’ bedroom, father’s office, brother’s room,” explains Samantha, who designed the house with her family firmly in mind. “It is – or it attempts to be – a manifestation of my idea of what a family is… what our family is.” -
“Each space is given a name on the home’s documentation – parents’ bedroom, father’s office, brother’s room,” explains Samantha, who designed the house with her family firmly in mind. “It is – or it attempts to be – a manifestation of my idea of what a family is… what our family is.” -
“Each space is given a name on the home’s documentation – parents’ bedroom, father’s office, brother’s room,” explains Samantha, who designed the house with her family firmly in mind. “It is – or it attempts to be – a manifestation of my idea of what a family is… what our family is.” -
Playfully shaped windows filter light into the bedrooms. In rooms on either side of the waterfall, Samantha designed wooden wall panels that slide upwards; when open, they offer access to the water, connecting you to nature.
A decade in the making, a Californian architect’s family home in the small town of Ojai celebrates both Modernism and Minimalism. A man-made waterfall, a tower and a subterranean pool make for playful fantasy living.
WORDS Martin Jacobs PHOTOS Daniel Dorsa, Graham Dunn and Open Space
Californian architect Samantha Mink attributes her interest in architecture to poetry. “I’d put words together to capture a spirit and to create a place,” she says of her youthful passion for the written word. “I later realized that you can put whole worlds together physically, too.”
Her family home is one such world, a passion project that is a poetic nod to both spirit and place – an allegorical space imbued with fantasy, playfulness and a sense of escape. Located in the small Southern Californian town of Ojai, in a valley between the Topatopa Mountains and the Los Padres National Forest, the positioning itself seems otherworldly. “Ojai is a place of extremes, characterised by fires and floods, and distinguished by its impressive, centuries-old oak and sycamore trees,” Samantha explains. “It is a town with a history of wellness, healing and spirituality; a place where the air is crisp, the skies glow pink, and citrus trees thrive.”
It’s little wonder, then, that the heart of Samantha’s home is a cocooning space – one that is inherently about reconnection. A concrete tower with a waterfall that cascades from its top is the only part of the home visible upon entering the property – and not one that presents as immediately cocooning. At its base, 4.5 metres below ground level, is what the Pratt Institute School of Architecture graduate calls “the sanctuary”. “I was warned by many that the sanctuary would be unpleasant – ‘cold’, ‘moist’, ‘echo-ey’, they told me,” she says. “But that was exactly what I was after: a completely different place; a secret that can only be accessed by wading through the pool channel beneath the waterfall.” It’s here, nine metres below the tower’s oculus that opens to the skies, that Samantha has built a hot tub – and it’s this that she considers to be the heart (and heartbeat) of her home.
Asked which idea came first – the monolithic tower or the home’s long, horizontal structure with its contemporary reimagining of Mid-century Modern principles – Samantha says it was the latter. Referencing Where the Wild Things Are and Alice in Wonderland, she regards the required stepping down from street level to enter her home as a crossing of a threshold into another world. “But the intersection of two things is always the beginning of something, and so there had to be a disruption of the continuity of the horizontal,” she explains of the tower.
Water was integral to her design, most noticeably in the form of a pool that not only runs the entire length of the front of the house, but abuts it too. Inspired by the nostalgia of a swim-up bar at a hotel often visited with her family when she was a child, the pool doesn’t adjoin the house for aesthetic reasons alone, nor is it just about the cooling it offers in the summer months. “The pool surrounding the house makes the space feel completely ethereal,” she says. “To enter, you descend from a dry Californian meadow into the ground, and open a heavy concrete door, its weight indicating that you are entering another world. You pass through a concrete vestibule before the house finally opens up. The light, the warmth, the pool and its reflections, the landscape beyond… It’s an immersive experience.”
This idea of immersion extends to the design of the house within the landscape as well as to specific areas in the home. In the open-plan entertainment space, a sunken lounge – much like the similarly sunken sitting nook in another room – brings your eye to water level. In rooms on either side of the waterfall, wooden wall panels slide upwards, allowing access to the water and inviting its poetic sounds indoors.
It’s inside the low-slung living spaces that Samantha’s restrained use of two materials – concrete and timber – and her minimalist aesthetic for decorating nod to, and put an entirely playful spin on, desert modernism. And while she appreciates the practicality of her materials (concrete’s thermal retention; the honesty of wood), they’re ultimately in service to the unusual rooms they create. “I’m interested in the creative and unexpected use of space,” she says. “Architecture should be fun.” | samanthamink.com
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