Moir Residence

The design concept of the Moir House in The Santa Lucia Preserve is informed by the landscape it inhabits. Indigenous California Oak trees serve as a frame surrounding the building as it opens to key focal elements – ridges, valleys and rock outcroppings – and allows their forms and palette to permeate the residence. Two primary design elements infuse the home with natural beauty: light monitors admit filtered northern light, while the H-shaped building layout forms a communication between two courtyards and draws a landscape path between the hilltop and stream.

The overarching woodland-inspired aesthetic is applied to the Client’s request for a hacienda-style home. To achieve this, several central hacienda design elements were identified, distilled and merged with natural modernist style in a perfect synthesis to form the contemporary hacienda.

While open beamed ceilings and exterior overhangs recall the traditional Mexican ranch vernacular, the interior color, materials and furnishings reflect the surrounding environment. The qualities and textures of oak moss, rock outcroppings and wildflowers enter the home with a poetic arrangement of aged tree trunk slices that climb up the fireplace wall of the great room. Tanned leather recalls hacienda ranch days, while blending seamlessly with the earth-tone palette. The residence functions as a unified whole; traditional forms are imbued with organic qualities in a synthesis between structure and nature.