Bal Cross

The arrival façade is a study in layered restraint. A dark timber volume cantilevers over the entry, framed by a row of slender black columns that read almost as a screen. Above it, the upper floor sits back beneath a deep, thin-edged roof plane whose pale soffit catches the last light of the day. Vertical louvers veil the upper-floor windows, filtering sun and sightlines without closing the house off. At ground level, long horizontal bands of warm wood-grain cladding anchor the composition, and a lower garage pavilion, finished in the same palette, steps the massing down toward the neighbors.

The garden elevation reverses the logic. Here the second floor projects as a deep, timber-lined frame, held aloft on two steel columns so that the covered terrace below becomes an outdoor living room. Broad stone steps descend from the terrace to the lawn, softened by planters and lit from beneath at night. To one side, a steel pergola strung with lights shelters a long dining table beside the pool, where stone coping and a frameless railing keep the edge of the water clean. A pale stone wall closes the composition and gives the terrace a firm edge.

Inside, the architecture carries the same material conversation. Exposed timber beams run the length of the living room ceiling, drawing the eye out to the palms beyond the terrace. Dark-stained timber piers and a matching partition wall give the space weight and rhythm. The stair is treated as sculpture: a folded black plane rising through the house, traced by a single line of light along its edge and grounded by a thin glow at its base.

Carpentry and architectural steel recur throughout, from the louvers and pergola outside to the steel-edged stair and dark metal detailing within, giving the house a consistent vocabulary at every scale. That coherence gave interior designers Sulkin Askenazi Design Studio a clear framework to build on. The result is a home that can absorb a full household on a Saturday afternoon and still feel calm, private, and entirely at ease with its garden.