Inside Palo Alto's Serene Geometric Mansion

In Silicon Valley, where the rush to be ahead of the curve is practically a love language, one couple commissioned a home that could marry that ethos with a slower approach to life. “He’s very out there—wants the latest, fastest clicky thing possible—and she wants everything to be harmonious and calm,” recalls Paul Vincent Wiseman, founder of the Wiseman Group, a San Francisco–based interior design and architecture firm. Their brief, in other words, was to make serenity and circuitry live under one highly considered roof, in a “house to function for each of them,” adds Mauricio Munoz, the studio’s design director, who created the home alongside Wiseman and associate design director Luis Alves. These clients had previously lived in what Wiseman calls a world of high-end spec houses, which were lovely but lacked the level of detail the office is known for. The elegant yet unexpected home they envisioned would also serve as a gracious backdrop for hosting. “They told me that entertaining was a really important part of their life—not just them, [but also] their young adult kids,” Munoz says. “They wanted to create a place where they want to invite their friends, and where gathering can happen for the family.” More from Robb Report These Subwoofers Will Take Your Audio Experience to the Next Level What It's Like Onboard Giorgio Armani's Stunning 236-Foot Superyacht Switzerland's Gstaad Palace Just Gave Its Largest Restaurant an Opulent Makeover The entry sequence sets the tone for the project’s fusion of technology, craft, and occasional whiffs of spirituality. The wife is “very interested in feng shui,” Wiseman explains, and the front pivot door needed to satisfy its energetic rules. A typical mirror in the foyer was out of the question lest it usher good energy back outside; instead, the team designed a trio of triple-layered eglomise reverse-painted mirror panels. “There’s parts that you see through, parts that reflect back,” he says. “So, it’s a very contemporary design, but it satisfies the feng shui energy movement, which is very important to them.” The glass appears to be fractured into abstract triangular shards, a bit like broken ice—a motif carried throughout the house. Materially, the team anchored the home in a quiet, almost monastic palette of limestone handpicked in the quarries outside of Valencia, Spain, and oak for warmth. “If you look at the materials that are being used—the wood, the stone, the figured marble—everything is harmonious, highly unique, and detailed at the same time,” says Wiseman. Subtle variations, including a brick pattern in assorted scales, keep the restrained hues from ever feeling flat. “We try to avoid the white box,” Munoz notes. “We want something warm, something humans can live [in].” Programmatically, the house is a study in both duality and togetherness. “We have a primary suite for her and a primary suite for him, and each of them represent their personalities in some way,” explains Munoz. She is “calm and cool and collected and loves nature,” which is reflected in her room, where crystal lights dangle and 3-D-printed metal leaves, backed by mica and lit from behind, appear to flutter in a breeze up the leather-wrapped wall. His bedroom, meanwhile, has an LED-lit headboard wall that also resembles shattered glass. The theme is repeated on the interior of the angular panels lining the surfaces of the private theater, which either conceal or reveal serious tech gear depending on whether the lights are on or off. “It constantly can be transforming—colors and shapes—all playing with lights inside the space,” Munoz adds. The result is a kind of private resort, where the two of them can live their best lives to the max: They have “a full spa, a full theater, full area for entertainment, bars, and so on,” Munoz says. “Even the garage is entertaining,” Wiseman adds. As one might expect with a new build at this level, it wasn’t without its hair-raising moments. Take the spiral staircase, which was fabricated off-site from solid steel and craned into place in one piece before the roof was constructed. “The handrails are all wrapped in leather by hand, and the walls behind it are also leather panels,” Wiseman says. In the oak-clad wine room, which was partially inspired by the work of the Wiseman Group’s collaboration with the late Frank Gehry—who wrote the foreword to its monograph, Inner Spaces—a rose-tinted mirror adorns the ceiling, creating the illusion that the undulating shelving for bottles stretches high above you. Like all the rooms in this home, it grows more entrancing as you spend time in it. Wiseman likens the experience of being here to meeting “a woman who’s highly sophisticated and dressed in haute couture. You say, ‘Oh, isn’t she beautiful?’ ” he says. “And then as you get to know her, you notice that the clothing is custom, the jewelry is the best, the hair is the best, and the details are all there. But the first impression is this one whole quality: beauty. And that’s kind of the philosophy we have: The closer you look, the more you see.” From the street, you’d never guess what’s unfolding behind the facade of the home. “You would drive by, and you would never know it’s there,” says Wiseman. Multiple volumes are arranged around a “central courtyard where the pool [is], so you always feel you’re totally private in relation to what’s happening beyond you,” Munoz adds. That depth of detail within has made the house exceedingly comfortable—almost dangerously so. “When we went to do the photo shoot, the client was there,” Munoz recalls. “He took me aside and said, ‘Mauricio, you have put me in trouble. My wife doesn’t want to leave the house, she doesn’t want to go anywhere.’ ” In a land of perpetual progress, they’ve landed on something far rarer and more precious: enough. Top: The elegant central courtyard with a pool framed by custom limestone firepits and lounge chairs by Atlante. 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