Project: Loewinger Residence
Architects: Shevi Loweinger, Ravit Kaplan
Location: Guerneville, California, USA
Area: 1,500 sq ft
Photographs by: Chad Mellon
Guerneville in Northern California is the home to an amazing redwood forest that attracts tourists from the entire world. This breathtaking landscape is also the place where the contemporary Loewinger Residence is located.
It was designed by the owner himself – Shevi Loewinger with the help of his architect friend Ravit Kaplan. The main purpose of this home is to provide a place for the family to spend their vacations but it is also intended for renting. The design is simple where the exterior is clad in wood while the interior is designed with simplicity in mind. It is essentially a blend of the traditional holiday cabin and the contemporary urban home.
From the architects: “As an entrepreneur and design lover with lots of guts, I was looking for a piece of land to build a new modern vacation rental home that will be totally my own design. I found a beautiful flat sunny lot in the small town of Guerneville, surrounded by old redwoods and with a giant one in my back yard.
I envisioned the house from the beginning: It should be a wooden house but with a very modern appeal, high and tilted ceiling, huge windows, open space living room.
The house has a main living space/kitchen with huge windows in both sides and a high tilted ceiling, ranging from 13 feet at the front to 20 feet in the back, facing the huge tree and the mountain. There are three bedrooms on the main level. Modern metal staircase leads to a beautiful mezzanine over looking the main space and the mountain. The house has two large decks, one in the back facing the large yard and the huge tree, and another one in the front, for shed sitting, looking at a small tree house we built for my daughter.
“My friend Architect Ravit Kaplan prepared the plans for the permit. After getting the permit, I managed the interior design and materials choices: Cedar for the sidings, concrete floors, Blomberg Windows, Kitchen from Leo Claudio cabinets in SF, designing the bathrooms (one of them with dramatic black penny floor), teaching the contractor how to do flash doors (by learning it myself from the internet), and all the way to the landscape and gardening. I chose mostly neutral colors and straight lines.
In the beginning I was thinking of a black house but after I saw the beauty of the cedar, I decided to leave it natural.
It was a great full year of driving several times a week from San Francisco to Guerneville (In Russian River area, 1.5 hours drive from SF) to manage the project. I worked with a local contractor and local workers and I’m planning to work with all of them again. I can’t wait for the next project!”
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