BACK FROM THE BRINK
At Esalen in Big Sur, a historic bluff-top house is restored to its natural state.
Back in 1967, when Gestalt therapy co-founder Fritz Perls moved into his house on the grounds of Esalen, the iconic Central Coast retreat that served as harbinger of the New Age, he inserted a cutout into a living room wall where he could place a film recorder. Thanks to that cubbyhole — and YouTube — it’s possible today to see a white-haired, bearded Perls chain-smoking in a chair near his giant fireplace while guiding patients, in an authoritative German accent, through their dreams and neuroses.
After remaking 10 standard guest rooms as part of Esalen’s campus-renewal project, Carissa Duncan of Carmel design firm Salt+Bones took on the Fritz House last year — a magnificent, semicircular structure of handhewn stone and redwood built into a cliff overlooking the retreat’s famous mineral baths. She decided to keep the cutout “as an homage to Fritz.”
After Perls left in 1969, Esalen co-founder Dick Price lived in the house for several years. By the time Duncan walked in, the space, which was used for meetings and workshops, hadn’t been touched by a designer since the ’70s. Old carpet covered the concrete floors and Japanese paper lanterns were strung up on plant hooks.
“It was such a profound, historical spot,” Duncan recalls, noting how she could see nothing but ocean from the wall of glass that forms the home’s southwest boundary. “We didn’t want to change the design. We wanted to strip away all the layers and get back to the bones.”
The typical “good bones” reference doesn’t begin to describe the Fritz House. Built in 1965 by Selig Morgenrath, a Big Sur designer who worked on many of Esalen’s buildings, the structure is a combination of impressive masonry and old-growth redwood salvaged from ’30s-era wooden bridges on Highway 1.
“Those timbers come from virgin heartwood, which you simply can't get anymore,” says Esalen CEO Gordon Wheeler. “Most of them are more than a foot wide and harden over the years to a consistency almost like iron.” Although not even iron can withstand the elemental whims of the Big Sur coast forever; days after we spoke with Wheeler, storm-induced mudslides closed Highway 1 south of Esalen and cracked Pfieffer Canyon Bridge to the north beyond repair, cutting off access to the institute. Students and staff were later evacuated by helicopter.
Those same elements had beaten down the Fritz House more gradually over the years. After repairing the roof and the sea-facing exterior, replacing the windows, and sanding and sealing every inch of wood, Duncan moved on to refining the home’s most essential feature, light.
The living-dining space is drenched in a warm southerly radiance during the day, and the designer wanted to
transition to an inviting candlelit glow at night without adding too many fixtures. She wrapped an eight-inch steel band along the walls and inserted LEDs throughout. With the exception of a few reading lamps, Duncan eschewed task lighting. “Part of being at Esalen is removing yourself from the day-to-day,” she says. “The lighting needs to help people decompress, not re-engage.”
Then Duncan pondered the room’s rare half-circle shape. Using surplus redwood Esalen had on property, she designed a deep sofa bench that followed the arc of the wall, topped with overstuffed pillows made of hemp and lambswool. Across a circular Four Hands coffee table, two Janus et Cie chairs were chosen for their size and transparency: Made of rope-wrapped steel, they offer comfort without adding visual bulk.
“I wanted the materials and palette to mirror the environment instead of stealing the show. I wanted them to have the same grit and texture,” says Duncan. “The result is serene and elemental. When you walk in, you can’t help but breathe deeply.”
One of the advantages of working at Esalen was having access to its on-site artisans. They fabricated not just the sofa bench but also a small desk in the living room facing the deck that runs along the length of the house, as well as headboards and cantilevered nightstands in each of the two bedrooms. Duncan kept these spaces simple, with Matteo cotton sheets and quilts and white linen curtains on the sliding glass doors.
In the bathroom, Duncan kept the original wood walls, stone shower and concrete countertop, but she upgraded to brass fixtures from Waterworks, which will patina over time. “Our concept was wabi-sabi, the beauty of imperfection, on things that would develop character and age gracefully.”
In the small kitchen, Duncan added an aqua-colored Heath tile backsplash with a gunmetal glaze to create a pitted texture echoing the rocks and sea. Over the round concrete dining table, she hung an Ay Illuminate bamboo nest pendant light that casts dramatic shadows at night. Two Eames chairs finish off the dining area, which opens onto the monolith fireplace where Perls liked to sit with his cat and listen to classical music. Over the years, students have placed small flowers in the crevices between the hearth stones; if you look closely, you can see how they’ve dried into a purple outline.