Project: Peninsula House
Architecture: Richard Beard Architects
Interior Design: Kelly Hohla Interiors
Home Builder: Peninsula Custom Homes (PCH)
Landscape Architecture: Lutsko Associates
Location: San Francisco Bay Area, California
Photography: Paul Dyer
The peninsula south of San Francisco boasts suburban towns and villages nestled in the hills and valleys along the bay. In this picturesque setting lies a rare 2-acre site, a sun-filled property offering privacy and ample space. The clients eagerly secured this site, ideal for a house and support structures with room for both active and passive landscapes.
A Complex Design Challenge
“The program for the Peninsula house was quite complicated,” notes Richard Beard, founder of Richard Beard Architects. “It required clever compositional moves to accommodate everything the clients wanted. While designed for easy and casual living on a day-to-day basis, it had to provide a generous entertaining space, office, fitness room, and guest quarters—all while maintaining privacy for everyone.” The goal was to create a family-friendly home that conveyed permanence, comfort, luxury, tradition, and modernity. The solution was a house functioning as a strong yet neutral armature, relying on traditional proportions and materials. The interiors, serving as an elegant counterpoint, animate the spaces as desired.
Defining the Property with Stone-Clad Structures
A series of stone-clad, linked structures and walls define the property, breaking down the scale of the roughly 12,000-square-foot house. Spaces between structures form a suite of exterior courtyards. The raw cleft face of the dry-stacked stone provides a sense of permanence and privacy. The house unfolds in layers, signaling the journey from public to private life through walls and courtyards, leading from the street to the autocourt and entry structure, and finally into the house. Guests cross a water feature and pass through a portal into a loggia adjoining a courtyard and reflecting pool. On axis is the front door, revealing the home’s interiors. The steel and glass entry showcases a grand, curving staircase rising in front of another reflecting pool and the rear yard.
Blending Classical and Modern Interior Elements
Inside, classical proportions are stretched to create unique profiles. Exterior stone walls slip into the entry, transitioning into limestone, wood, and plaster. Subtle differences in limestone finish (honed for interior, brushed for exterior) unify interior and exterior spaces. Large steel-framed windows and western red cedar beams add scale to the interior. Simple major interior finishes provide calm and scale, while furnishings add comfort. “The homeowners’ main concern was always about going too modern and mine was about staying too traditional,” says interior designer Kelly Hohla. “I wanted them to have an updated home that feels timeless and that they can grow in—I think we were able to strike the perfect balance.”
Functional and Inviting Living Spaces
Shared gathering spaces dominate the first floor, with access to the exterior. The second floor includes a kid’s zone, distinct yet conveniently close to the parents. A light-filled playroom with a proscenium and stage becomes a world apart.
Expansive and Versatile Outdoor Areas
Outside, the grounds mix formal and informal spaces, including a putting green, water features, and a separate 1,000-square-foot pool house. Clad in cedar, the pool house doubles as a guest house. The Peninsula house defies simple definition, offering an aesthetic that’s neither too formal nor too casual—the perfect solution for contemporary family living.
