SELBY LANE Residence | FIVE PALMS

Sillicon Valley, Northern California

INTRODUCTION & ORIGINAL DESIGN INTENT

Originally designed by architect Curt Cline of Modernhouse Architects, the Selby Lane Residence / Five Palms was conceived as a contemporary Northern California residence centered around openness, natural light, long-term adaptability, and a strong relationship between architecture and landscape.

Completed in 2013 on a one-acre site in Atherton, California, the residence was organized as a two-wing architectural composition balancing expansive communal living spaces with more intimate private areas while maintaining continuity between interior and exterior environments.

The original design objectives envisioned a young family with children, creating a home capable of evolving over time while supporting entertaining, social gatherings, and long-term living.

ARCHITECTURAL HISTORY & SITE LINEAGE

Five Palms occupies the former site of a modest mid-century ranch house once owned by noted modernist furniture designer Folke Ohlsson, founder of DUX Furniture and Duxiana Beds.

Located within the residence is a hand-colored architectural rendering commissioned in 1961 by San Francisco-based modernist architects Calvin & Wong. Though never realized, the proposal envisioned a modern residence remarkably similar in spirit to the architecture ultimately completed decades later.

The similarities between the original Calvin & Wong proposal and the completed Curt Cline residence became part of the layered architectural narrative of the property.

FIVE PALMS DESIGN CONCEPT

The Five Palms design concept focused on creating a residence rooted in proportion, warmth, family interaction, and long-term livability.

The architectural composition balances communal and private zones while maintaining strong visual continuity with the surrounding landscape. Nearly all primary living and entertaining functions are located on the main floor, allowing the residence to evolve naturally over time while preserving accessibility, comfort, and fluidity between spaces.

INTERIOR ARCHITECTURAL TRANSFORMATION — 2025

A single-family home in Atherton, Northern California, where architecture, interior architecture, and landscape are conceived as a continuous whole, shaped by light, proportion, and a restrained material palette.

Set on a one-acre site in Atherton, this residence unfolds through a series of calibrated volumes and sheltered transitions, responding to what was already present  the land, the light, and a quiet modernist legacy. Conceived as a dialogue between architecture and interior architecture, the house balances openness and retreat, creating spaces that feel calm, tactile, and deeply inhabitable.

Sophie Goineau’s intervention explores continuity as an architectural language, recomposing an existing modern structure through mass and void, light and landscape.

Some houses assert themselves through form. Others reveal their logic more slowly, shaped by what already exists. This Northern California residence belongs to the latter category: a home conceived through attention, restraint, and a sustained dialogue with its context.

The existing modern structure, originally designed by Curt Cline of Modernhouse Architects, carried what Sophie Goineau describes as a restrained modern clarity an underlying order that became the project’s point of departure. Rather than overwriting it, the intervention articulated the house into geometric volumes arranged around gardens and a long minimal pool.

Within the corten steel enclosure, architecture, interior architecture, and landscape are experienced as a continuous field structured yet porous, calibrated for movement as much as for pause.

The programme unfolds with deliberate calm. Open living, kitchen, dining, and music spaces are linked by a sequence of sheltered outdoor transitions. Existing vines, outdoor artworks, and sculptures punctuate the experience, reinforcing continuity between built form and site.

The project evolved over several years into a deeper recomposition privileging proportion, natural materials, and light, allowing architecture, interior architecture, and landscape to evolve in parallel rather than as isolated gestures.

Flow was conceived as a sequence of thresholds rather than a single open gesture, allowing spaces to expand and contract naturally. Balance emerges through the dialogue between mass and void, enclosure and openness, light and shadow, shaping an intuitive experience of movement throughout the house.

PROJECT INFORMATION

Project Name: Selby Lane Residence / Five Palms
Location: Atherton, California
Site: One Acre
Ground Floor: 4,880 sq ft
Second Floor: 1,322 sq ft
Main Residence Completed: 2013
Flying V Guesthouse & Pool Composition Completed: 2019
Interior Architectural Transformation Completed: 2025

Architecture:
Curt Cline / Modernhouse Architects

Interior Architecture & Design:
Sophie Goineau Design Studio

Photography:
Valentina Sommariva / Living Inside

Text:
Client, Sara Dal Zotto & Sophie Goineau

PROJECT TEAM & CONTRIBUTORS

Architecture — Curt Cline / Modernhouse Architects
Interior Architecture & Design — Sophie Goineau Design Studio
Furniture Partner — Luminaire Menlo Park / ROBINA BESON Design House / GRAYE Living  / MASS Beverly
Photography — Valentina Sommariva / Living Inside
Pool & Landscape Design — Steven Van Wickle / Paradise Pools and Gardens
Steel Work & Custom Outdoor Fireplace — Chris DeBruine
Construction / Project Management — Robert Trujillo / Tru Construction

CLOSING STATEMENT

Five Palms, The Selby Lane Residemce  was conceived as a residence rooted in proportion, continuity, family interaction, and long-term comfort.
The residence continues to evolve through architecture, landscape, interiors, art, and material continuity while maintaining the calm restraint and warmth that define its original vision.
Presented as part of the 2026 MA+DS Silicon Valley Modern Home Tour.
Thank you for visiting Five Palms.

Architecture: Modern House Architects / Curt Cline
Landscape, Gardens & Pool Design: Paradise Pools and Gardens / Steve Wickel
Photography: Valentina Sommariva
Video: Cartography Studio / Luca De Santis
Furniture Partners: Luminaire, Paola Lenti LA, MASS Beverly, Graye Living