Architectural awards for Petaluma, Sea Ranch homes

Noted Bay Area architect William Turnbull, one of the original designers of The Sea Ranch, died 17 years ago. But his legacy lives on, not just through the many memorable buildings he designed that are still standing - including the St. Andrew Presbyterian Church in Sonoma - but through the work of his wife, Mary Griffen, and former associate Eric Haesloop, who revived the firm under the name Turnbull Griffen Haesloop several years after his death.

They have a third partner, Stefan Hastrup, and William Turnbull’s sister Margaret also joined the team as an interior designer.

Their architecture is deeply rooted in the philosophy of Turnbull, who, like his early Sea Ranch collaborators Charles Moore, Donlyn Lyndon, Richard Whitaker, Lawrence Halprin and Joe Esherick, strove to create beautifully understated structures that fit naturally on their sites and meld with the surrounding landscape.

The pair this month took two architectural awards for Sonoma County homes that eschew ostentation in favor of evoking the North Coast’s agricultural heritage.

The Redwood Empire chapter of the American Institute of Architects gave its top honor award to the San Francisco firm for its work on the Hupomone Ranch, a graceful barn-shaped home built on an original 160-acre homestead in Petaluma’s rural Chileno Valley. The house is certified LEED Platinum, the highest standard for green building, for its energy-saving features, including passive heating and cooling with thermal mass and insulation, geothermal radiant cooling and heating and photovoltaic panels for electricity.

“The barn is such a wonderful type of building. It feels very at home in that part of Petaluma,” said Haesloop, who studied under Turnbull’s former partner and Sea Ranch collaborator Charles Moore at Yale University’s architecture school before joining Turnbull’s firm in 1985.

Griffen and Haesloop also received a second-tier merit award for a new home at The Sea Ranch created in the rustic and minimalist spirit of the original design of the coastal enclave, but updated for a new century.

“The judges seemed to be looking with an eye toward things that really fit within the space in which they were designed versus something that was extravagant and too much for that space,” said Wendy Young, executive director of the Redwood Empire AIA.

The two homes, both gently evocative of the rural farm structures so familiar in the North Coast landscape, were the only two residential projects to receive judge’s awards in the biennial competition, which recognizes outstanding architectural projects in the region.

The other notable projects receiving top honors included the Sonoma Land Trust’s Baylands Pavilion and wildlife viewing area in the tidal marshes off Highway 37, the historic Hall Winery in St. Helena and the new Hamel Family Wines estate near Glen Ellen.

Receiving merit awards were the Luther Burbank Savings headquarters in downtown Santa Rosa, the Sweetwater Spectrum Community for people with autism in Sonoma, Mendocino College’s Lake Center and the as yet-unbuilt design plans for a fire station and emergency health center in Alameda County.

The winning Chileno Valley home was built as a vacation getaway for a couple who have three boisterous kids and also love to entertain friends and family at their country retreat.

An important part of the design success of the home is how it is sited, probably the most important lesson Haesloop said he learned from Turnbull.

“It’s thinking about how you live on the land and how you want to live on the land,” he explained.

The architects spent a lot of time studying when Haesloop describes as a “magical little mini-valley.” But its best assets weren’t being shown off by the old mold-infested house that was there. Eucalyptus, cross fencing, a cattle feeding trough with a funky prefab metal roof, and old bathtubs all took away from the natural beauty.

“A recluse had lived there and planted hedgerows that blocked off the view,” Haesloop said.

After clearing it out, they had a site with sweeping views of the valley and mountains beyond, visible within the house through a wall of glass 23 feet high.

The house has vertical wood boards painted white inside and out, with dark concrete floors over radiant heating and cooling. It is super-insulated with the equivalent of R-60 insulation, however, which means it requires almost no additional heating or cooling. So as not to waste the natural resources, Haesloop said, the owner built a dining table and other furniture from the felled eucalyptus.

The Sea Ranch House also takes advantage of the views with careful siting. The 1,100-square-foot house is situated between a classic Sea Ranch cypress hedgerow and a meadow. Many of the prime lots have already been developed over the past 50 years, Griffen said, leaving properties that pose a variety of design challenges or don’t offer the best views.

The architects for this house came up with a design solution to capture the view: They popped out an octagonal deck that opens to the meadow and the ocean beyond. A continuous band of windows and doors follow the outline of the cutout to capture the panorama. Open-beam cedar ceilings and Sheetrock walls create a minimalist interior that suited the Japanese aesthetic the owners wanted.

The house is built at the southern end of Sea Ranch, not far from the earliest Condominium 1 and homes designed by Esherick.

“It’s a challenge to figure out how to make a new house feel special even though it may be the last in a neighborhood, to make it both fit well into the overall landscape and yet create a wonderful setting for your clients,” Griffen said. She and Haesloop have created about six new houses at The Sea Ranch since her late husband’s death, maintaining the original integrity of the place while moving the design forward.

Shake roofs are no longer allowed because of fire danger. And as wood becomes more precious, there is more mixing of wood with other materials, including simple Sheetrock.

“It’s really a delicate balance of how to preserve the essential quality of the place and yet allow people to live they way the want to live in 2014. It’s complicated,” Griffen said. “But overall, there is a feeling that it worked and that it’s much better than if you were to just string a row of houses along the shore and then another row of houses behind them that don’t get to see the ocean.”

You can reach Staff Writer Meg McConahey at meg.mcconahey@pressdemocrat.com or 521-5204.