Valley Hideaway

This residential retreat for a chef and her family in Sonoma County, California, is also a charming cooking laboratory that takes its design cue from the local rural typology.

After spending more than a decade in New York and San Francisco, American chef and food educator Hollie Greene Rottman and her husband, pharma executive Jim Rottman, wanted a getaway home with a garden where they could connect with nature, grow their own food and experiment with healthy cooking. They found the perfect location on a steep hill in Sonoma County, California, that overlooks the valley and is surrounded by miles and miles of greenery. Tasked with designing the home: the award-winning architecture practice Mork-Ulnes Architects, helmed by architect Casper Mork-Ulnes.

Compared to the sprawling 2.4ha land it sits on, the twostorey home, at 1,751 sq ft, is incredibly modest in size but it enjoys an obstructed panoramic view of the valley and there’s more than enough space for a five-bed vegetable garden.

Casper took his cues from the form and historic social functions of the barn – a common feature in the county – and transformed it into a multipurpose open interior concept that functions as a resident as well as an event space.

Dubbed the Triple Barn, the home paints a distinctive figure in the green landscape with its three-gabled roof clad in rust-hued corten steel. “We chose corten steel for its natural resistance to fire as well as its resonance to the agricultural buildings of Sonoma Valley,” shares Casper. What’s more, the soil of the Sonoma hillside is rich in iron, which gives it a similar rust-red colour, linking the house to its land.