Swatt + Partners built a home office that hovers.
Not metaphorically. Actually hovers. A wood-framed glass box supported by two vertical concrete slabs, cantilevered over a slope in Healdsburg’s Dry Creek Valley. Nine acres of Douglas fir, madrone, and oak trees below.
The clients wanted workspace separate from their main house. The architects gave them something better: a room that feels like it’s suspended in the canopy.
Glass and Wood
Western red cedar for the floor and roof, matching the main residence designed by the same firm in 2008. Four walls of glass. Exposed concrete cores doing the structural work.
Inside: one open room. Concrete, wooden casework, minimal furniture. The architecture does the heavy lifting. When your office looks out over wine country forest, you don’t need much decoration.
The cantilever isn’t just dramatic. It’s practical. One section hovers over flat ground, the other extends over the steep slope. Minimal site disturbance. Maximum view.
More Than Just the Box
The project expanded the property with an infinity pool, terraces, and water features. All designed to blend with the landscape, not fight it.
Swatt + Partners, led by Robert Swatt alongside Miya Muraki and Phoebe Wong-Oliveros, has been doing this since 1975. Their approach: let the site tell you what to build.
Here, the site said: float.
Architecture: Swatt + Partners
