A House that Rides the Wave in San Diego by Safdie Rabines Architects

When your roof flows in a curve that prompts people to nickname your house “The Wave House,” you know you’ve got something a bit out of the ordinary; that’s exactly what these San Diego homeowners have in this colorful design from Safdie Rabines Architects. The street-facing façade of the home is almost austere in its approach: cool gray stone, accents of wood grain, and glass, lightened only by color from rectangular terraced planter boxes — which are also gray! The only light entering from this point comes in through a narrow strip of window toward one corner…and, of course, through those wonderful windows beneath the “waved” roof. It’s when you move toward the back of the house that you see a less forbidding façade — indeed, one that seems to soar above its steeply inclined lot.

Once inside the home, levels connect via “floating” stairways and an open plan that seems to make the walls disappear. Architectural details from the exterior repeat inside; wood-grain flooring brings it all together. Colors are cool blues and aquas, pale yellows, pristine whites, smooth dove grays. On the home’s ground level, a bedroom suite boasts its own fireplace; on the next level are more sleeping quarters behind louvered frosted windows for privacy. A soaking tub is surrounded by that same frosted glass and raised on a platform in one bathroom; and, just in case the occupants don’t get enough of the panorama around them they have not one, but two rooftop decks from which to enjoy it. Graceful and livable — that’s this contemporary home that makes the most of rough terrain from Safdie Rabines.