The Sanctuary

The Sanctuary began with a simple direction: an Asian Modern house centered around Indoor-Outdoor Living.

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The original brief referenced Japandi, Bali and Zen, but the design evolved beyond any single style. Rather than reproducing traditional Japanese or Balinese architecture, the team looked at the broader Asian architectural tradition — its simplified forms, structural rhythm, openness, relationship to landscape, and use of light and shadow — and reinterpreted those ideas for a contemporary home.

The site created a specific challenge. The house could not simply open completely toward the exterior on every side. So instead of keeping nature around the perimeter, the design brought it into the house: intermediate interior courtyards were introduced between major spaces, planted zones surrounded by glazing, allowing greenery and daylight to penetrate deeper into the home.

Some of the exterior elements exist primarily to shape light. Screens, gates and posts create patterns of light and shadow, and as the sun moves those patterns change, giving depth to the architecture. So the house is not experienced exactly the same way throughout the day.

The entrance expresses the architectural idea particularly clearly. Its post-and-beam composition references the structural language found in traditional Asian architecture.

Here, that idea is simplified. The team took the underlying architectural language and reduced it to a contemporary composition of posts, beams and layered elements. It is not a historical reproduction. It is a modern interpretation of the idea.

The plan is clearly zoned, but it was never intended to feel divided. From the garage, you move through the mudroom and into the main living areas. From the kitchen, you can continue toward dining or outside.

The designers described the circulation almost as a loop: there is always somewhere to go rather than a corridor ending in a dead end. That same principle continues upstairs, where the second floor remains visually connected to the main volume.

The large amount of glazing, open passages and visual connections were not simply aesthetic choices. They were all intended to create space, air and lightness. Even the staircase was designed to avoid becoming a visually heavy element.

One of the project's less expected decisions is the use of heated concrete flooring throughout the first floor. The team chose concrete not only for its appearance but for its thermal properties, and it allows the first floor to read as one continuous surface rather than a series of different flooring materials.

The primary suite was designed as a continuous composition rather than a collection of separate rooms. The bed is built into the architecture: instead of treating it as a freestanding piece of furniture, the designers created a complete structure around it, with the bed, platform and bench working together as one element.

The mattress becomes the changeable component. The architectural composition remains. The platform geometry is then repeated through the suite, including the bathroom and bench elements, so that the spaces feel connected even when they perform different functions.

The wellness area extends the same philosophy into a dedicated space for health and recovery. The design includes a sauna with salt stones, along with space for activities such as yoga and meditation.

Its relationship to greenery is intentional. The idea is that wellness is not isolated from the rest of the house or treated as a purely functional room. It remains connected to nature and daylight.