At Selby Lane Residence, Sophie Goineau Design explores the relationship between mass and void, considering what demands physical presence and what can recede almost entirely from view.
Selby Lane Residence is designed around how each space is experienced in relation to what lies beyond it. Located in a quiet Silicon Valley community in California, the home’s interiors by designer Sophie Goineau balance scale and materiality to create intimacy within expansive volumes.
The existing modernist structure, originally designed by Curt Cline of Modern House Architects, possesses what Goineau describes as “a restrained, Corbusian clarity”, providing an underlying order for the intervention. Three geometric volumes are arranged around gardens and a pool, with the dwelling unfolding largely across one level and a two-storey volume housing the children’s rooms. Throughout, attention is paid to the shifting composition of space.
“We think about a space in depth and in movement,” Goineau says. “The eye travels through those successive relationships without interruption, and landscape, architecture and interior begin to read almost as one continuous gesture.” Across the property, architecture, interiors, glazing and landscape form a succession of planes that continually reorganise as occupants journey through the residence.
Within the home’s strong architectural framework, the restrained material palette complements the existing form. Warm timber, concrete, terrazzo, travertine and refined metals appear across millwork, surfaces and built-in elements, creating a sense of continuity throughout. Repeated timber details bring warmth and tactility to the large volumes, helping to bring the design back to a more human scale. For Goineau, restraint also creates “a certain invisibility”, allowing the architecture to become “a quiet framework through which you experience the space, the landscape, the art and the life happening within the house”.
Colour enters through furniture, art and objects, with greens, ochres and golden tones drawn from the home’s materials and surroundings. Green Paola Lenti seating responds directly to the lawn, allowing its otherwise distinct colour to recede into the landscape. Ochre tones similarly reflect both the client’s preferences and hues found throughout the property. “A colour can appear close to you and find its relationship much farther away,” Goineau notes. “A material can pick up a hue that reappears somewhere in the landscape.” Light, shadow, texture and depth further guide the eye through these layered connections.
Despite its monumental scale, Selby Lane Residence retains a sense of intimacy and comfort. Its strongest interventions are subtle: continuous timber, varied ceiling heights, integrated millwork and carefully controlled material transitions guide the eye without becoming isolated statements. For Goineau, this ‘invisibility’ comes from how thoroughly each element has been resolved. When proportion, material, alignment and rhythm are considered in relation to the whole, individual gestures fall away, allowing the architecture, interiors and landscape to be experienced as one.