red bluff guest house

This project is a guest house for a repeat client. The main house exerts a dominant formal presence on the site, the front of which faces this guest house. As a result, Cicaida was conceived both as a sort of formal aftershock, and as an intricate lantern in the landscape. The building is bite-sized; it is easily assimilated into a single-stroke mental model. As a result, or perhaps as a cause, the building’s details each assert the building’s singularity. The storefront system, the ceiling and patio soffit, and the cabinets all conform to the expression of a single regulating height. The foundation has integral color and has a 45° stucco lug, allowing the exposed concrete at grade and the finished stucco to be co-planar, with an articulated reveal. The soffit of the eaves is mitered to resolve a thin fascia profile with both a sloped side condition and level end condition.

The owners have deep roots in central Mexico, and much of the material palette is a direct reference to their memories and affiliations south of the border. This same impulse allowed for some unconventional moves, like the fully open glass shower, with an outdoor shower to match, screened by both living bamboo and bamboo as a construction material. The precision of the modern detailing design moves and the odd materiality, combined with the lantern-like yellow glow inside a white stucco box, makes this building occupy the same space in my mind as Corb’s Cabanon. 

Project by JHA. Aaron Denton Co-Designer.