Concrete and Teak hardwood set the stage for a beach house: Designer Forum

By Robert Kerr

Silver Strand is a new 3,000 square foot, single-family residence in Oxnard, California, about an hour’s drive north of Los Angeles, which serves as the owner’s weekend retreat. When Robert Kerr Architecture Design set out to create Silver Strand, flooring became an important piece of the connection between the building and the beach. Though a beach house is, by nature, outwardly focused, thoughtful flooring specifications at Silver Strand that carry the tenor of the natural surroundings encourage residents to turn their sights inward as well.

As an architect, I begin every project with the same approach: an open mind with no preconceptions about what the building might become. Those preliminary moments of total unknowing force me to reconsider all my principles and rules. At this preliminary stage, I like to create multiple narratives for my projects, each constructed around specific design issues. I determine the individual building design components and conjure a story for each. Sometimes one component might be more dominant within the design process, or they may all have equal influence.

The environmental conditions on the beach are extreme, and materials must be carefully chosen. Salt air, blowing sand, harsh sunlight, moving soils, ever-present moisture and fluctuating temperatures are just a few of the issues that must be addressed to avoid future building failure. Every material inside and out has to be chosen with care because permanent damage can happen within days of installation. All the flooring surfaces must withstand blowing and grinding sand.

The building’s formal design is almost totally site-driven and responds to views that create a diagonal axis across the site, the Pacific to the west and the Channel Island Marina to the northeast. We pushed and pulled the roof up and down to emphasize this view-axis, and then we placed windows and openings along the same axis. The building’s form resulted specifically from those design decisions. Additionally, we cantilevered the building’s second floor so that it seems to float on a layer of colorful tile with gold inlay that reflects the bright southern California sunlight.

The ideas that drove the design of the exterior—those of reflection, interaction, lightness and horizontality—quickly became a narrative of how the water meets the sand. What is their relationship? How does one impact or change the other? How do they differ? Answers to these questions naturally transitioned into a guide for our approach to most flooring issues. Water and sand are two objects that are seemingly parallel and in unison but actually have a much more complex relationship. Constantly struggling against one another, their relationship is more a contrast than a harmony. My task was to find a way of expressing flooring in a similar way.

Two major materials, each isolated on one floor, fit the narrative, so we settled on concrete for the first floor and reclaimed teak for the second. We finished the stair and millwork in teak as a way to bridge the floors by bringing the material off the ground and into the space.

Using these materials in such a monolithic way also created opportunities for moments of contrast, and we used the baths to accomplish this goal. In all the baths on both floors, we specified small, colorful tile that contrasts with concrete or wood so that the spaces feel isolated, special and cozy. The areas finished in this tile are never public and are meant to be discovered like hidden treasure, another nod to the house’s beach setting.

We placed the Silver Strand’s entry on the side, so that each visitor has a view of the ocean just before entering the building’s mix of warm woods and grey concrete. Materials and surfaces on the first floor are carefully chosen to connect with the exterior, connect with the second floor, and also be transitional. The first floor is not treated like most beach houses, where one is hurried to the second floor views, but is designed to be more sedate.

The flooring on the first floor is a fully exposed post-tensioned concrete slab that also doubles as a heat source with radiant heating cast within. The color variations and slight cracks in the newly poured concrete are celebrated. Stained a dark grey, the slab works as a continuous material to the exterior, and its texture recalls the sand just a few feet away. For this level, we selected paint and custom-designed wallpaper that is dissimilar enough from the flooring so as not to compete with the concrete’s color and sheen.

The second level sets the stage for more complexity than the first, including a raised floor on the entire back half of the house, opposite the beach. Raised 14” above the living room as a way to preserve ocean views, the kitchen becomes the pivot point for the entire residence. Raising the floor also isolates the living room so that it seems more connected to the deck, reinforcing the idea of interior/exterior living.

We oriented the reclaimed teak boards to point toward the ocean. The wood continues onto the exterior deck with only a small threshold for the sliding doors. Since we wrapped most of the kitchen’s millwork in the same wood, the flooring here has a three dimensional quality. It is no longer just a horizontal surface, but instead is something that feels as though it rolls across the entire space.

There were other materials that we specified to move through the space from exterior to interior as well. Twelve-inch glass tile, mosaic glass tile and concrete are all used both indoors and outdoors.

Sustainability is a primary focus of every project that comes through our office. Our attitude is that sustainability is simple to achieve and can be accomplished with no initial cost upgrade. Green components in this project with no cost premium include tankless water heater, drought tolerant landscaping, no-VOC paints, white reflective roofing, operable skylight in the center of the house that acts as a natural heat vent, and the use of integral colors on all exterior surfaces to avoid any need for future painting. The only green product that required additional expense was the reclaimed teak flooring, but that cost was easily offset by using the exposed concrete slab on the first floor.

Having taught for the past ten years in the architecture and interior architecture programs at Woodbury University, I have developed a more nuanced approach to mixing building forms and their finishes. Unlike many architects that apply color and finishes after a building is designed, I like to consider all components of a building from the very beginning. Sometimes I even allow a finish material’s physical size or characteristic to dictate how the architecture is designed to accommodate it. I never prioritize exterior finishes over interior finishes because my projects are meant to be experienced outside-in and inside-out. Sacrificing one for the other would undermine my culture and methodology.

Like all materials, I usually design flooring to express its unique characteristics, but I want to find ways of using it that make people reconsider the material or how it is being used in the context of a project. It is important to move flooring away from only the floor and encourage people to question what they see. To this end, I often pull similar colors from the floor to the walls, pull similar materials onto millwork or just finish a wall with a flooring material.

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