Ahead of the Curves

A sinuous house by Snøhetta and Nicole Hollis dares to be different

- SAM COCHRAN

How do you design a house that feels at once foreign to and completely of a place? That was the challenge posed by a husband and wife eager to break convention in Silicon Valley. “They wanted a home that felt like it had landed from somewhere else but also like it had always been there,” recalls Craig Dykers of the global architecture firm Snøhetta, whose unexpected updates to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the French Laundry had caught the couple’s attention. Outside-the-box ideas were exactly what they had in mind. “These clients had an intuitive sensitivity to shape and line,” says Dykers. “They were hoping for a house that wasn’t just about plain modularity or a rectilinear plan.”