Rancho Nuevo

Visible from the kitchen and guest bed rooms, the third primary exterior space is a “morning patio” located on the east side of the house. Broad and finished in the ubiquitous concrete grid pattern, this private area repeats the motif seen throughout the exterior of large bowls placed on trapezoidal pedestals and planted with agaves. It’s another space in which the landscape rises above a series of low walls,but in this case, the sweep of those walls offers a curvilinear geometry that contrasts with the deck’s grid pattern. The star of this space is a curved and ascending rusted-steel wall in the form of a half spiral. Its presence discretely divides the space, lending the guest room patio a sense of privacy from the public breakfast patio. On the guest patio side, the steel wall encompasses a small waterfeature in which a delicate plume of water rises just a couple of inches above the water’s surface to provide a tranquil, trickling sound that conjures feelings of serenity in the calm, quiet space. The sweeping wall of corten steel also has a continuous six inch wide vertical cleft that allows an axial glimpse of the plume from the public side and, from the opposite angle, a sliver view through to the public space beyond. A cantilevered steel sluice spills from the cleft into a pebble filled reflecting bowl that overflows yet again into a final pebble filled basin set only one inch below deck level. At night, the plume, lower basin and impact zone of the sluiceway are all lit from beneath the water's surface, projecting a dancing light onto the graceful arch of the corten steel room divider. michaelwoodall.com