Every home is a puzzle unto itself. Every site is unique. Every
client demands a custom result—not merely because KAA
Design is a luxury shop, but because each life is singular
and cannot be reproduced.
Homes along the Strand in Manhattan Beach exemplify this.
The canvas for nearly all of these premier slots is a slender,
33-by-100-foot oceanfront lot. Kirkpatrick and company
have designed 35 Strand homes, and no two are alike, not
by a mile. Why? Because each home is the reflection of a
client's lifestyle—and more. "We're helping mine our clients'
story, digging up the essence of why we're doing this," he
says. Along the way, the design is meant to "embrace the
imperfection, the one eyebrow-raiser that gives each home
personality." What flamenco dancers call the pellizco, that
spontaneous personal flourish that becomes a signature.
A COMMON LINGUA FRANCA
What's remarkable is how these principles scale globally.
The California lifestyle—indoor-outdoor living, communion
with nature, the co-mingling of interior and exterior spaces—
has become an international aspiration. But KAA's answer
isn't to export a template. They won't drop an LA glass and
steel structure, for instance, into the snowy mountains of
Aspen or on a Jamaican beachfront.
Instead, they source local context: traditions, customs,
and materials of place. A Costa Rican home uses native
Guanacaste wood, each board requiring new learning
about its comely, swirling grain. A Dubai project drew from
local sandstone monuments. A new project, not far from
Tokyo, is KAA to the core, but designed to be authentically
of its place. Same philosophy. Infinitely variable solutions.
The board-form concrete throughout certain KAA homes
also exemplifies the marriage of machine and craft. One
client had a specific vision: a Strand home so rugged that
"if a herd of elephants came through, it would be okay"—
durability married to beauty.
Concrete is industrial, unyielding, structural. But when the
formwork is treated with intention—the right wood selected,
grain textures pronounced or muted through sandblasting,
the pour timed perfectly—the result is a one-off beauty.
An industrial surface becomes a textured landscape of
light and shadow. Contrast it with warm stone or wood, and
suddenly the eye finds elegance in the juxtaposition. This is
craft serving machines, machines serving craft.
SWITCH OFF: ON
This approach connects Kirkpatrick to a design lineage
running through Southern California, amplified by his own
third-generation Los Angeles credentials. Richard Neutra
and Rudolph Schindler bringing Modernist principles to life
K A A D E S I G N G R O U P , P H O T O B Y M A N O L O L A N G I S
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