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Many Delights in a Rethinking of the Ranch-Style Home

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Although this is a thoroughly 21st century living room, isn’t there a hint of the suburban American ranch house of the 1960s here too?

The home in Menlo Park, California by Spiegel Aihara Workshop synthesizes the best of both eras.

A thick hallway ceiling of solid wood is balanced over a glazed walkway.

Its 21st century stone tiles gives way to a 20th century cliche; the suburban “carpet” of mowed grass.

The weighty wood ceiling is a far cry from the acoustical fibreboard ceilings of the 1960s, but is designed to achieve the same end, softening sound.

The low-slung building with its flat transitions between materials is very 60s, yet the minimalism of the wood treatment utterly updates it.

The design is not attempting to be archly retro, but simply accepting and modernizing the tradition.

But a surprise: above the kitchen a raised skylight (21st C) gives a breather from the relentless horizontality (20th C) of the ranch home, bringing cool light in to its center.

From the cool dark shaded kitchen, a view out to the garden – you can almost see the Letraset children playing in the sun.

At the far end of the wing, the bedroom has all the openness and spare grace of 21st century minimalism.

The low-slung house is oriented to offer a cool respite from the heat of Menlo Park.

On the other side of the entry wall, an archetypal walled-off slice of the new suburbs that were still a miracle in the 60s.

The car is accepted right into the home in typical ranch style.

Its cross shaped plan gives garden views out both sides of every room.

The architects have successfully re-appropriated the traditional forms of the California ranch house, but with genuine sincerity, taking the good, and honestly trying to improve on the original.