A Professor-Turned-Farmer’s Circular Hawaii Home Takes Full Advantage of Mesmerizing Views
Behind the stylized, surfboard-inspired architecture of Craig Steely’s latest experiment on the Big Island is a simple house guided by the routines of farm life.
Behind the stylized, surfboard-inspired architecture of Craig Steely’s latest experiment on the Big Island is a simple house guided by the routines of farm life.
Roughly 1,000 feet above sea level on the slopes of Mauna Loa, Captain Cook (population 4,000) is a world away from the manicured lawns and putting greens of the sprawling resorts elsewhere on Hawaii’s Big Island. The center of the Kona coffee industry, the area is verdant and a little wild, with small farms that dot the landscape and banana plants as tall as two-story buildings.
Mitchell Lee Marks bought six acres of agricultural land here in the 1990s. Two decades later, when he was on the verge of retiring from his career as a professor at San Francisco State University, he decided to build a house on the property and begin life as a farmer. For help, he turned to Craig Steely, a Hawaii- and San Francisco–based architect whose climatically attuned work he had seen and admired.
With a circular plan capped by a finlike flourish, a 2,400-square-foot home designed by Craig Steely for a Hawaii farm has a striking profile, but its construction is based on traditional pole houses raised on tall piloti. "Part of the reason for building a pole house was that it would sort of hover above the farm and toward the view," says Steely.
Photo: Mariko Reed
Steely remembers seeing the land for the first time and bushwhacking through thick, overgrown underbrush to determine where the new house should go. "The site was filled with cat’s claw and guinea grass and feral mango trees," Steely recalls. "You couldn’t see anything. The cat’s claw was six feet tall." With some clearing, however, the architect knew that the upper portion of the site, which sits 300 feet above a road, would provide a panoramic view of Kealakekua Bay and the Kona coastline. "When you look at it now, it’s like, how could you not build it here?" he says.
The living room is furnished with a Paolo Rizzatto 265 swing lamp from Flos, a Roche Bobois Mah Jong sofa, and side tables from Blu Dot.
Photo: Mariko Reed
The lanai looks over the sloping mountainside to Kealakekua Bay. When you step out onto it, "the circular building bends back behind you, and you’re standing in the view," says Steely. The Dansk chairs are from Gloster.
Photo: Mariko Reed
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