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P R O F I L E | C R A I G S T E E LY
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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 the conceptual
nature of his work, it's not surprising that Steely
is a draw in Silicon Valley, where he designed a
seemingly roofless house before completing the
2,600-square-foot Pam and Paul's House. Tucked
in the foothills of the Santa Cruz Mountains, the
latter house exploits its extravagant connection
to the natural setting and is another unequivocal,
almost transgressively minimal modern form from
Steely. But this house, with all its glass, appears
ITH PAM AND PAUL'S HOUSE, an unambiguously
work of modern architecture in Cupertino,
California, architect Craig Steely is in his
element—at the intersection between
the natural and built environments. "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
memories 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 architecture 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 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
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