Division Knoll

Big Sur, USA

Single Houses

Architects: Piechota Architecture

Location: Big Sur, USA
Year: 1997

Stretching boldly across a verdant hill, the architecture of Division Knoll sits somewhere between pavilion and home, its glass volumes breaking apart from each other to create a panoramic experience of a landscape that features dramatic views of two famed Big Sur bridges. The material palette is an eclectic mix — bright, clear glass; solid, knotty wooden columns and glu-lam beams; vertical board-formed, almost white concrete; large, gray stone pavers — that comes together into a singular, sublime experience of landscape and building.

The interior’s simple, low-slung furniture continues the long, horizontal lines of the landscape. The house’s charm lies in a progressive discovery of landscape through space, as the pavilions’ slightly irregular, splayed arrangement makes the views appear to unfurl cinematically around it. The large pavers that line the floor extend through the glass walls to the outside, giving the house a sense that it belongs to a single continuum of space, and that the glass walls mark a division that can be easily transcended.