You hear this house before you see it, or really, you hear the ocean through it. When the great-room walls are open, which is most of the day, the Pacific is right there in the room. The whole house is built around one idea, and nobody compromised on it: get rid of the boundary between the inside and the beach.
The arrival
From the street you get almost nothing, just a flat wall of board-formed concrete and a single pivot door. That's on purpose. The drama waits until the door opens and you can see straight through the house to the water.
The great room
The living space pairs soft materials with a hard, bright view. There's oatmeal linen upholstery, a low travertine table and oak underfoot, and none of it competes with the horizon. The retractable glass runs the full width of the room, and when it folds back the sunken lounge opens straight onto the sand.
The interiors are by Renata Álvarez of Estudio Álvarez. She's based in Los Angeles, and pretty much her whole practice is retractable glass and terraces people use all year. Her approach here was to take things out. There's one upholstery color, one stone and one wood, and the rug was picked because it can handle sand. The modular seating is RH's Cloud system. She picked it because a sofa that gets rearranged every time the walls open has to come in pieces, not as one big block.
The brief was one sentence: make the ocean the only decoration. Everything else recedes.
The kitchen
The kitchen is tucked behind the living space and doesn't try to be noticed. Pale wood fronts, one run of stone, and the appliances all hidden behind joinery. That's the concealed-kitchen direction we keep seeing in high-end renovations this year. It works hard and you'd barely know.
The primary suite
Upstairs, the primary suite does the same thing on a smaller scale. One corner is all glass, there's a private terrace, and the stone bath sits where it gets the sunset. There's no closet, just a fitted dressing room.
The verdict
Houses like this can turn cold, all glass and no comfort. This one doesn't, because the materials are warm and the furniture is easy to live with. It's a livable version of an idea that usually never gets past the mood board. And it's currently on the market. We doubt it'll stay there long.
Credits. Interiors: Renata Álvarez, Estudio Álvarez, Los Angeles. Great-room seating: RH. Reported on site by Élodie Marchand, Design Editor-at-Large. We name the designer on every tour we publish; where a credit is withheld by the owner we say so rather than describing the studio in the abstract. See our editorial standards.
