Crystal Cove, Newport Beach, California

Crystal Cove was my first project, and I have never stopped being grateful for it. A new construction home in a gated community above the Pacific, fourteen months from the first drawing to the final placed lamp. Beginning a career on a house that did not yet exist taught me the lesson that has governed every project since. The interior has to be decided while the drawings are still on the table, not once the walls are standing and the compromises have already been made for you.

The wrought iron windows and doors set the character of the house before anything else was chosen. They establish the sight lines and the quality of the light, and every material that followed was selected to sit correctly beside that iron. Custom cabinetry ran throughout, including the kitchen, a wine cellar and built-ins designed for the rooms they occupy rather than adapted to fit them. Lighting was made to our specification, because stock fixtures rarely hold their own against openings of that scale.

The furniture was entirely new, which is a particular kind of responsibility. There is no existing piece to anchor a scheme and no inherited chair to design around, so every decision has to be right on its own terms, and the rooms have to feel collected rather than delivered.

The work continued outside. Landscaping, outdoor lighting, outdoor furniture and water features were all part of the same scheme, because a house of this kind is read from the garden inward as much as from the hall outward.

I am doing the same work now for families building on Lake Murray, sitting down with the builder before the framing goes up. The address has changed. The principle has not.