A Carmel home opens to land & sky
If you’ve never seen a fox in a fig tree, you might get that chance at the Carmel Valley home of Chris and Fred Brown.
You might also catch turkeys or deer meandering around the silvery twisted-and-bent trunks of old-growth oak trees.
You would definitely see the Santa Lucia Mountains canopied by bright blue sky because the house’s entry, living room and dining room are wrapped almost entirely in glass.
Designed by architect Mary Ann Schicketanz, of the Studio Schicketanz in Carmel, this is not a typical glass house. It looks more like minimalist sculpture — a glass-and-wood rectangle pierced by plaster cubes. “The plaster penetrates the glass in different amounts to create tension and interest,” Schicketanz said.
The site for the geometric display is the top of a knoll in a 2,040-acre residential development named Tehama and owned by actor Clint Eastwood. Lucky for the Browns, Eastwood preserved more than 85 percent of the undulating hills as natural open space — hence the wandering wildlife and cinematic valley views.
The Browns, who have three grown children now living on their own, moved to Carmel Valley from the East Bay for a less hectic lifestyle. “I’d always loved the Central Coast, and I was nearing retirement,” said Chris, who is now officially retired from a career in business development.
While Fred, an attorney, returns to San Francisco for work, he too spends his home life here, basking in the calm.
“The first thing I do in the morning is make my wife a cup of coffee,” Fred said. Chris replies, laughing, “That’s the bliss of retirement — I get to stay in my room doing whatever I do when I first wake up. And then a lovely cup of coffee comes walking in.”
The master suite, kitchen and library have Mexican travertine floors, plaster walls and plaster ceilings. “It’s a simple materials palette,” Schicketanz said. “The solidity of the cubes gives the feeling of being in a cocoon. The plaster is handtroweled so you can actually see the craftsmanship.”
For the guesthouse, the outdoor fireplace and the wall along the entrance stairs to the main house, Schicketanz used local gold-and-cream-colored Carmel stone. “I always want to make a building that’s of its site,” said the architect. “Here, there were 12 to 24 inches of topsoil, and everything underneath it was solid Carmel stone. It makes sections of the residence look like a kind of acropolis.”
Two parts of that acropolis — the guesthouse’s front facade and the large outdoor fire surround — help to define an expansive courtyard that the residence is organized around. “Our kids love it out there by that fireplace,” Chris said. “When they’re here, they stay up all night out there.”
“Walking into the big area of the living room and gazing out at the valley and the mountains is really something,” Chris said. “Each day, it’s different.”
A variety of experiences is exactly what Schicketanz was after: “It’s as if the glass rectangle has just a floating roof and nothing on the sides,” Schicketanz says. “It’s like sitting under the canopy of an oak tree. But obviously, you only want to be in the living room when it’s daylight. When it’s dark outside or when the weather is stormy, you want to be in the rooms in the plaster cubes, the areas that feel sheltered and cozy.”
And when the Browns are inside, they have privacy, despite the glass. “There’s nobody around us who can look into our windows,” Fred says. Except for the occasional fox. “We were in the library one day and we looked up and saw a fox sitting in our fig tree, eating all the figs,” Chris says. Fred adds, “He wasn’t paying any attention to us.”