Forget about Pinterest boards and magazine clippings. The design brief that Mike and Sharon Matas compiled at the outset of their Sea Ranch odyssey delivers a veritable master class in the art of communicating intent, philosophy, and aesthetic direction. Peppered with archival drawings of The Sea Ranch, quotations from the utopian community’s founding architects, and evocative family photographs, the document eloquently illuminates the Matases’ vision for their seaside idyll. Sections of the introspective manifesto include How We Rest, How We Play, How We Eat, and Bringing the Outside In. The brief concludes with a quote by architect Charles Moore that neatly sums up the essence of the couple’s endeavor: “The Sea Ranch has been my Mother Earth, a place where I have gone, and continue to go, to have my energy and spirit rekindled.”
“Mike and Sharon dove deep into research, and they were involved in every aspect of the process, from the conceptual approach to the smallest piece of hardware,” says Roman Alonso of Commune Design, the AD100 firm tasked with realizing the Matases’ mandate. “They were determined to honor the form and spirit of the original architecture, so we couldn’t veer far from what was there when this place was conceived. The project wasn’t a purely orthodox restoration, but it was far more faithful than an ordinary renovation. Let’s call it a resto-vation.”
The Matases had been visiting The Sea Ranch—a quietly radical planned community that sprang up in the 1960s along 10 miles of breathtaking Northern California coastline—for roughly a decade when the opportunity arose to acquire their own slice of heaven. During the COVID pandemic, they purchased two adjacent units in Condominium 1, the first development erected on the property, which was designed by Moore along with fellow architects Donlyn Lyndon, William Turnbull Jr., and Richard Whitaker. In keeping with their do-no-harm edict, the couple decided to preserve the two units as discrete entities, each with its own living room, dining area, kitchen, and sleeping quarters. There is only one point of connection, a camouflaged sliding door that joins the lower level of the first home to the upper level of the second, a condition facilitated by the angle of the hillside site.
“We like that it’s a little uncomfortable navigating the units. It’s almost as if you’re going camping,” states Mike Matas, an entrepreneur and designer at LoveFrom, Jony Ive’s creative collective. “The experience isn’t about luxury. Nothing is overly polished. You have to work your way through the spaces, which is part of the fun,” adds his wife, Sharon, a designer and illustrator, hailing the puzzle-like quality of the architecture.
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Although one of the units remained largely intact when the Matases found it, the second had fallen victim to an ill-conceived 1990s renovation that included such unseemly details as glass railings. “If you try to modernize these spaces, you basically destroy them. The only way to live here in a sensible way is to embrace the original ideas,” Alonso insists. To ensure their remedial efforts remained true to the Sea Ranch ethos, Commune collaborated with Eric Haesloop of Turnbull Griffin Haesloop Architects, the successor firm to William Turnbull Associates. “In some ways this was an academic project. Commune is serious about history and research, and they were open to wherever it led,” Mike recalls.
Aside from the architectural rehabilitation of the bastardized unit, many of the changes implemented by Commune involved upgrading materials and finishes: substituting fiberglass with Corian in the showers, for instance, and reengineering the system of shades and canopies that allows the homeowners to modulate the degree of privacy and exposure in places like the floating loft bedroom. Taking cues from archival images and extant details in other Sea Ranch homes—notably Charles Moore’s own unit in Condominium 1—the Commune team also introduced serious jolts of color, deploying custom hues derived from the lavish landscape and Pacific waters to define specific architectural volumes. “When everything is natural cedar, it can look like a bit of a jumble. The colors give shape to the architecture so that you can discern the geometries,” Alonso explains.
The great success of the Matases’ painstaking resto-vation lies in its seeming ease and inevitability. “In the end, you can’t really tell what’s old and what’s new. But it’s not disingenuous—we weren’t trying to create a museum piece from 1965. Everything feels honest and true to who we are and how we live,” Mike muses. “We weave indoors and out throughout the day, so we feel genuinely connected to the land,” Sharon adds. “Our home brings another dimension, another perspective to the rituals of our daily lives. You feel like you’ve been teleported to an entirely different place.” And that, of course, is the magic of The Sea Ranch.
This story appears in the AD100 issue. Never miss a story when you subscribe to AD.
