36 DIGS.NET
| 6.12.26
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P R O F I L E | C R A I G S T E E LY
ITH PAM AND PAUL'S HOUSE, an
unambiguously work of
modern architecture in
Cupertino, California, archi-
tect Craig Steely is in his
element—at the intersection
between the natural and built environ-
ments. "I'm interested in the dialogue
between man-made forms and natural
forms, in creating spaces in nature," says
the architect, who grew up in the California
mountains. He made stuff, observed things,
improvised. "Some of my earliest memo-
ries of space were formed around things
I discovered outside; things in nature, like
the way a path wound between two rocks or
how a circle of pine trees created a room. I
felt these reverences or feelings of architec-
ture before I even knew what architecture
was!" Steely's noticing of these spaces
grew into creating these spaces, "first in a
tree, or stacking rocks, or out of driftwood
W
on a beach" and "later in buildings that
have a strong reverence for nature without
trying to copy it."
These buildings form a compelling and
ambitious body of work that includes
Steely's Lavaflow series of Hawaii homes,
a boxy houseboat in Sausalito, and a
pair of pyramid-shaped towers in the
jungle cliffs of Sayulita, Mexico. Given
