Feldman Architecture and Thuilot Associates Earn a Best of Year Award for Residential Landscape

2021 Best of Year winner for Residential Landscape

The owners of this Bay Area residence, sited on a verdant 1-acre flag lot, had embarked on a series of architectural interventions over the years. Most recently, they sought to maximize use of their backyard, dotted with redwoods and mature oaks, by commissioning a pair of freestanding glass-box structures devoted to indoor/outdoor living. Designed by Feldman Architecture, each minimalist 450-square-foot pavilion has an identical footprint and materials palette—Alaskan yellow cedar slatting, hand-troweled plaster ceilings, concrete plinths—but a distinct function. One is an open-walled kitchen/dining space complete with a wood-fired pizza oven; the other is a spalike fitness and meditation room that can be buffered from the elements courtesy of sliding glass planes.

The pavilions are connected to each other and to the main house via a meandering concrete patio that seems an extension of the pavilions’ foundation, founding partner Jonathan Feldman explains. Further integrating the structures into the site is nuanced landscaping by frequent partner Thuilot Associates, including a freeform pond and lush plantings carefully conceived to soften the transition between the natural and the manmade. “We like for gardens to be fully accessible with lots of uses—a program that requires being open to freeflowing layouts,” founder Stefan Thuilot adds. “The complexity and unpredictability of the many spaces is what makes this garden so fun and unique.”

Feldman Architecture: Jonathan Feldman; Anjali Iyer; Jeff Wheeler; Michael Trentacosti

Thuilot Associates: Stefan Thuilot; Kimberly Yeo