Meadow House Reveals a Korean-Inflected Home for a Californian Meadow
Meadow House sits within the secluded Santa Lucia Preserve near Carmel-by-the-Sea, CA, United States, shaped by Mark English Architects. The house answers a multigenerational Korean-American family’s brief for a Californian home with a distinctly Korean heart, set against strict conservation rules and a powerful meadow landscape. What results is a low, Z-shaped residence where indoor-outdoor living, measured light, and layered privacy give daily life a deliberate rhythm.
Low morning light grazes weathering steel and cedar as Meadow House steps along the meadow’s gentle slope. From the roadway, the house barely registers, absorbed by oak canopies and long grass.
Within this quiet entry, the Z-shaped plan comes into focus as it follows the land’s contours and reacts to the protected Santa Lucia Preserve. Terraces deepen along key facades, indoor rooms lengthen into the landscape, and distant hills pull the eye across a broad horizon.
This house in the Santa Lucia Preserve near Carmel-by-the-Sea is a multigenerational residence shaped by Mark English Architects for a Korean-American family. The project responds to strict conservation guidelines that protect the meadow and oak woodland, while drawing on shared sensibilities between Californian living and Korean domestic traditions. Context drives every move, from the low profile and concealed siting to the choice of materials that echo surrounding earth and bark.
Daily life centers on the meeting point between interior and terrain rather than any single room. Deep terraces, shifting light, and long views support family gatherings, business meetings, and quiet retreats, all while keeping the meadow present.
Placing The House
Building in the preserve means most of the land stays untouched and visually undisturbed. Meadow House therefore tucks into a gentle slope, its Z-shaped form tracking natural contours and avoiding established trees.
Dense oak canopies work with the low roofline to conceal the residence from trails and surrounding roads. Weathering steel and cedar cladding carry tones of bark, soil, and dry grass, so the building recedes into the landscape rather than reading as an object.
Terraces extend from the meadowside edges where the land opens out, while other wings pull back to respect existing plant communities and drainage patterns.
Indoor-Outdoor Sequences
The plan reads as a series of linked pavilions, each tied to a particular relationship with the meadow. Deep covered terraces wrap segments of the house, turning door thresholds into outdoor rooms.
Some interiors receive overt sunlight, with broad openings that slide aside to erase enclosure during temperate hours. Other rooms sit in tempered light, where overhangs, orientation, and aperture size soften glare and promote calm, echoing traditional Korean courtyards and verandas.
Wide corridors connect these zones and double as view galleries, framing long slices of grassland and distant hills while keeping circulation generous for multigenerational use.
Multigenerational Living Patterns
The brief calls for a home that can host family for short and extended stays while also accommodating business gatherings. Public-facing rooms sit closer to arrival zones, allowing meetings and larger events without disturbing quieter sleeping wings.
A sequence of wide ramps replaces typical stairs, answering accessibility requirements and the clients’ wish to age in place with a dignified, unhurried movement. Corridors open up, then narrow, so scale shifts from generous communal areas to more intimate private realms.
Views remain constant, however, so even quiet bedrooms maintain a visual link to the meadow and oak canopy, keeping each generation oriented to the same landscape.
Material Calm And Light
Inside, a restrained palette sets a calm backdrop for changing conditions outside. Italian bluestone grounds the floors, while white oak and cedar bring warmth to walls and ceilings.
Quartz and stainless steel introduce cooler notes in kitchens and service areas, giving hard-working surfaces a refined clarity. This mix creates subtle depth without competing with the exterior’s shifting greens and golds.
One vivid moment comes at the sunken lounge at the tip of the living pavilion, where indirect sunlight washes the recessed seating and casts a golden tone on interior finishes.
A Quiet Edge To The Meadow
At the living room doors, the threshold between bluestone flooring and long grasses is measured rather than abrupt. Terraces catch sun through the day, while shade from extended roofs cools edges where people gather.
From the sunken lounge, local wildlife moves through the meadow almost at eye level, underscoring how low the house sits within the terrain. The project reads as a concise intervention: generous enough for family, work, and guests, yet visually light against Carmel Valley’s broad, protected landscape.
As the weathering steel patinas and cedar silvers, Meadow House folds further into the preserve. Light, views, and the quiet pull of the meadow remain constant anchors.
Photography courtesy of Mark English Architects
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