Wallpaper 11

PHOTOGRAPHY: BRUCE DAMONTE WRITER: HARRIET THORPE

Husband-and-wife team Casper and Lexie Mork-Ulnes,

an architect and designer respectively, work together

at San Francisco- and Oslo-based practice Mork-Ulnes

Architects. One of their latest projects is a compact

concrete guest house in California’s Sonoma Valley,

for which they have distilled the deinition of

a ‘retreat’ down to its essential value, as a place of

shelter and protection.

Feeling relaxed inside a sturdy piece of architecture

begins with feeling safe – even when, as in this case,

it is cantilevered over a ravine – which is why the

pair decided to build this new addition to a young

family’s holiday home entirely in concrete. And the

trio of concrete cocoons soon had occasion to prove

their protective credentials. As soon as the units

were completed, the Nuns Wildire ravaged the valley.

‘It scorched all the way up to the building,’ says

Casper. ‘We were wondering how the structure was

going to perform, but there was no damage – only the

ground was blackened.’ (^) »
ABOVE, THE RETREAT
COMPRISES THREE SMALL
VOLUMES PERCHED AT THE
TOP OF THE RAVINE
RIGHT, MADE OF BOARD-
FORMED CONCRETE, THE
BUILDING FEATURES
EXTERIOR PIVOT DOORS IN
SOLID EASTERN WHITE PINE
4
AMERICAN EYRIE
Winter Boltholes
A concrete retreat is high and mighty in California
SAFE HOUSE
∑ 149
Architecture