Ocean View Contemporary Home

Site: The client purchased a portion of a working coffee farm in the Holualoa area of the Big Island with expansive shoreline and ocean views, overlooking Kailua-Kona village to the north. The building site was a former staging area for the farm. It was the ideal location, already void of coffee plants and with less slope than the surrounding farm. This allowed the home to sit amidst the working farm with the ability to flow from the home into the fields.

 

Client’s Vision: Wanting a more modern home than the typical Hawaiian hipped roof house. The clients were  flexible and open to design ideas and concepts. The design evolved over time in response to how the clients envisioned living their life in Hawaii. Beyond the house program, they wanted: a circular drive turnaround; a Koi pond; an exterior artifact display; interior display shelving; a private soaking tub; and the use of native fruit bearing trees. All of the elements ended up playing a major role in the design and articulation of the home.

 

Resulting Design: With the site being a working coffee farm design, measures were taken to create privacy for the clients when employees were busy in the surrounding farm. This was accomplished through the use of buffer zones, privacy walls, and an internal courtyard. 

 

A main goal of the design was to generate a multiplicity of experiences throughout the home for the client to interact with. Visually we created circuitous routes in the home with a series of visual sightlines, views, events and experiences from multiple locations that are revealed, then taken away, only to be revealed again later.