JENSEN at 30: In the Details

We are thrilled to see our Stanford Residence featured on the cover of GA Houses—and in stellar international company with Andra Matin of Indonesia and Waro Kishi of Japan, among others.

Mark Jensen collaborated with artist and designer Johanna Grawunder on this Silicon Valley home for visionary and IDEO founder David Kelley. The project reimagined a modest California ranch house as a place that reflects the client’s philosophy. Kelley describes design thinking as “a way of finding human needs and creating new solutions using the tools and mindsets of design practitioners.”

Kelley’s studio behind the main house is an angled, steel-frame structure that accommodates collectable objects, shop tools, and books on shelves that reach upward to the pitched roof. A large, sliding glass door opens wide so Kelley can pull in one of his vintage cars. The workshop captures the magic of design in particular details, such as its sloping wood exterior facade. “On close inspection, this wall doesn’t actually touch the ground,” says Mark Jensen. “It appears to levitate mysteriously, despite the heavy structural steel frame behind it.” There’s expression of both lightness and rigor. The space “is who I am,” Kelly  told the New York Times. It is an external extension of his inner life, of his stories and memories. 

A modern grange constructed from the innovative use of a pre-engineered metal building system, The Shed reinvents a vernacular typology. Jensen researched the history of agricultural construction to create a low-impact, environmentally light design. Principal and architect Dean Orr led the award-winning project with Mark Jensen. His favorite detail? The wood slat ceiling in the event space.

“The scale and spacing of the Monterey pine slats mimic the proportions and materiality of wooden palettes and produce crates found in agricultural contexts,” says Orr. The detail takes what could have been a ubiquitous trope of contemporary architecture and makes it into a thoughtful, unifying design that resonates with Healdsburg’s agrarian community.

Read more about The Shed.