Perched in the foothills of California’s Santa Cruz mountains, WOJR’s House of Horns transforms architectural ruins into something altogether more compelling. This 800-square-metre residence in Los Altos Hills breathes new life into abandoned foundations, creating a home that functions as both shelter and sculptural instrument. The project’s distinctive name stems from its conceptual foundation—the architects envisioned the house as an assemblage of instruments, each element tuned to capture the rhythms of daily and seasonal change. These metaphorical “horns” manifest as carefully oriented skylights and clerestories that orchestrate the play of light throughout the interior spaces.

WOJR’s approach begins with a bold gesture of restoration, re-burying the lower level into the hillside to restore the original topography. This intervention creates two distinct architectural experiences: above ground, a singular open space for gathering emerges, crowned by inverted elliptical vaults that reach toward the space’s perimeter. Below, a series of intimate chambers connect selectively to the landscape through sunken courtyards. The sculptural elements truly elevate this project beyond conventional residential architecture. At the heart of the upper level sits a fireplace carved from blocks of Vermont Danby marble—described by the architects as “one of the projects within a project.” This monolithic centrepiece anchors the open plan while serving as a functional focal point for family life. Equally striking is the cave-like bathing space below, supported by an ovoid column carved from stone. These marble elements blur the boundaries between architecture and sculpture, creating moments of quiet drama throughout the home.

La entrada House of Horns se publicó primero en Global Spaces.

Situated along a quiet grove in London, Urban Barn is a new house and workshop formed from an old carpenter’s workshop, three garages and a central house.

Occupying a dense formerly industrial site, the street is fronted by terraces of two-storey Victorian cottages. The memory of a WWII bomb is stitched into the fabric of the place, marking the bricks which make up multiple party walls which continue as a seam across the three main volumes of the house. Tied together by the materiality of the brickwork, the façade of the new house is given expression with handmade glazed bricks and perforated walls. Among overlooking windows, mature gardens and pruned rose hedges, the house is intended to act as a refuge for its occupants, allowing a sense of connection to, yet also solitude from its dense urban site.

Articulating the vestiges of old, the new additions and the points at which they meet, intersections between the three buildings are revealed as brick datums in doorway surrounds and peeled back walls in recognition of the once separate fragments of the house.

La entrada Urban barn, workshop and living se publicó primero en Global Spaces.