Merit Award
Butterfly House
Carmel, CA
Lead Landscape Architect: Ben Langford
On a long, slender hillside site in the Santa Lucia Preserve, a 20,000 acre private development and land trust near Carmel, California, a grove of native oaks (Quercus agrifolia) anchor three architectural pavilions with butterfly roofs, inspired by the clientäó»s vision of butterflies alighting in the meadow, and coincidentally by the presence of Mariposa (butterfly in Spanish) Lilies in the native landscape. With a strong theme of indoor-outdoor connection on the clientäó»s wish list, the design team collaborated to bring this desire into focus through playful paving patterns through which to move about the site, and bringing the restored meadow as close to livable spaces as possible, made accessible through generous apertures in the architecture. The site design along with the architectural program presents a compelling matrix of inside and out, both anchored to the land and poised to lift off.
