Candelaria Design ~ From Coast to Coast

It is official, Candelaria Design has gone coast to coast! From a home under construction in Montecito, California to a beach home in design on the far east tip of Long Island in Montauk, New York, to a couple of homes in design in Idaho to homes in the beautiful neighborhood of Cherry Hills in Denver, to finally a project in Albuquerque, New Mexico.....we are literally coast to coast and border to border!

I cannot tell you how fun it is to work in different styles and in different environments and settings. I also enjoy meeting new builders, vendors and craftsman - it definitely gets one out of the comfort zone and allows one to experience new ideas and techniques. Of course, it also means we need to work with different municipalities and governing authorities. I have to say, I love the Town of PV!!!! it is by far the friendliest and easiest municipality to work with. What I have found though is how important it is to make some face time with whoever you are going to be working with and really make a connection - especially with towns and their building safety departments.

People always ask, isn't it difficult to be halfway across the country and design a house? It's interesting because it is virtually the reverse of how we design homes here for clients who live in other parts of the country. With all the advances in technology such as FaceTime, Skype, GotoMeeting, it is really quite easy to work anywhere as an architect. I think for a builder it is much more difficult for obvious reasons - you have to be there. It is important we visit the site and get the context of the project in our mind, and then I like to stake the initial design on the lot and walk the design with the client. Then course we like to kick off the project with a ground breaking! Once under construction I like to come out for a framing walk through and an electrical walk thru. We can review shop drawings, samples, etc. by Skype and email. The key is to schedule bi-weekly meetings during the entire process so communication and progress are in a rhythmic cadence.

So what's on the boards???? Our home in Santa Barbara is a lovely Spanish Country Cottage in the hills of Montecito. This is a very exciting project for us as I have taken many clients to Santa Barbara for inspiration for projects here in Scottsdale. But to actually now design a home in Santa Barbara and see it now get built is so exciting for me and our Candelaria Design Team! What makes it even more fulfilling is that the client is a couple I designed a home for in Silverleaf in Scottsdale over ten years ago, and they then went on our Italy trip, attended our surprise wedding at Villa d'Este in Lake Como, and now we are under construction on their lovely dream home in Montecito. What I love about all this is we all share so many amazing memories and now capture all of that in this new home. It is the epitome of custom residential design. Homes are like a bottle of wine.....this home is a 100 pt. on the Wine Spectator List.

Then on the other coast we have started the design on a Hampton Style Beach Home in Montauk, NY for a client we just completed a historic renovation in Encanto. I have always been enamored with the Hampton Style....maybe because it is so different from the stucco and clay tile roofs of Arizona. I love the homes of Robert Stern and his book has been sitting on my office coffee table for years. Our client has been spending the summers  there for years and have had their eye on this property for some time. We visited the property for the first time in February of course in the midst of a blizzard! There is an existing home there that we will remodel in Phase I and then add a second story in Phase II. This is so exciting because our client is a designer and has exquisite taste so yet another wine on the 100 pt. scale!






Stay tuned as these projects come together.....Well - it's back to the boards!!!