Bruce Falck long dreamed of following the example of his father, who ran a construction company in Johannesburg, South Africa: he wanted to build a house designed specifically for his family.
“My father was a civil engineer and built the two houses I grew up in,” said Falck, 52, a former Twitter executive now working at a startup. “I always thought of building a house as something a father does for his family.”
In 2011 it was close. Falck and his wife, Lauren Weitzman, now 41 and working at Google, bought a house in San Francisco and hired architecture firm Studio Vara to do a comprehensive renovation. But just as construction was about to begin in 2013, the couple changed their minds.
“Children were imminent,” Falck said, and the prospect of living in limbo during a multi-year construction project no longer seemed so feasible, especially for Weitzman. (They now have three children between 4 and 8 years old). Instead, they decided to sell the house and buy something that was move-in ready.
“Bruce was really discouraged,” said Christopher Roach, a partner at Studio Vara. “But he said, ‘I promise you, in a few years we’re going to look for land in wine country and we’re going to do a project together.'”
About five years later, in 2018, Roach received a two-word text message from Falck: “It’s time.”
With the help of their architect, the couple began looking for land in Healdsburg, California, in Sonoma County, and found a 15-acre hilltop lot with views in all directions. “It looked like the African jungle,” Falck said. The couple bought the lot for about $1.5 million in July 2018, even before they had fully explored the land.
Just before closing, Mr. Roach camped on the site overnight to study the property further, thinking about where best to locate a house. “I like to see where the sun rises and sets,” he said, “and where the breezes come from in the morning compared to the breezes in the afternoon.”
As the architect walked around the site, he realized that it was even better than he had initially thought.
“One side of the hill slopes down to a seasonal stream with large redwoods,” he said, while the other side is populated with oaks and pines. “I took a lot of photographs, recorded thoughts and made some initial sketches. And one of the first sketches I made ended up being the basic plan and layout of the building.”
The sketch called for a boomerang-shaped house at the top of the lot, backing up to the edge of a steep drop-off. The design soon evolved into a 6,200-square-foot home with 4,000 square feet of interior space, much of it enclosed by glass, under a sweeping roof that covered another 2,200 square feet of outdoor space. When the glass doors are fully open, the effect is that of a luxurious shed.
“It’s often scorching hot up there,” Falck said. “But the house is basically a giant shadow structure.”
That concept also appealed to Ms. Weitzman. “When I was younger, I loved the idea of the old Southern-style wraparound porch,” she said. “We have the modern version of that.”
The two halves of the boomerang contain two wings connected by a contemporary version of a corridor, which can be opened and closed with pivoting and folding glass doors. One wing houses the bedrooms and faces Mount St. Helens and the sunrise; the other, which houses the kitchen, dining room and living room, faces the sunset.
The roof extends beyond the interior living area to cover an outdoor room with a brise soleil, which connects to other outdoor spaces, including the pool terrace and an outdoor kitchen and dining room.
The house is designed to be fire-resistant, with standing-seam zinc siding and walking paths around the perimeter that serve as firebreaks. It’s also self-sufficient during power outages thanks to solar panels connected to a backup battery, and has its own well and septic system. Due to delays caused by Covid and the wildfires, it took Fairweather Associates about two and a half years to build the house, at a cost of about $1,250 per square foot. The project was completed in June 2022.
“We watch the sunset, we’re in the pool, we’re in the hot tub, and Bruce is always grilling,” Ms. Weitzman said.
It’s exactly the kind of unique house Mr. Falck had in mind.
“This is a long-term thing,” he said. “For me, success would be that our children, when they are 80 years old, have a glass of wine on that patio and look at their children. grandchildren swimming in the pool. That is the metric of success.”
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