Majestic Home on a Cliff’s Edge Overlooking the Pacific Ocean

Villalucy is a beautiful contemporary residence located in Port Townsend, Washington and designed by wpa Studio. The 1,400-square-foot house overlooks the Pacific Ocean and seems to hover above a natural cliff. Here is a… poetic description from the architects which we found highly captivating:  “The house wpa designed is an antidote to the introverted routines of city living. The house is perched rather than planted. Like an anchored branch, it floats above the soft fragile ground below. Here what’s happening outside is given first billing. The life of the house is a reaction to it. You enter the house through a bar – an attenuated service zone dense with the practicalities of bathrooms, kitchen, storage and utility supply. Beyond the bar, the real living rooms are entirely open to the view and interpretation. This space is purposely abstract – stripped of air registers or built-in furniture, any tagging suggesting how it might or should be used. The house is a lookout, a delicately detailed observation platform from which to view what’s beyond rather than a set piece in a highly articula ted domestic drama. Here you are exposed, even susceptible, to the moods and rhythms of the land you see and the light you see it in. And because the house is not tied to any set script, you are free to respond. The identical steel moment frames that make up the structure of the building were fabricated offsite. This pre-fabrication minimized the staging area needed to build the house. Since the erection of the frames could be choreographed precisely, the balance of the construction could take place in the air – on a platform supported by these frames hovering en pointe above the existing topography. Over the course of the construction, phases of the work were scheduled with the help of a wildlife biologist to protect an eagle’s nest with newborn chicks 60 feet off the house. “(Photography by Lara Swimmer )