 The floor on the ceiling: Karl‘s team installed Merbau wood flooring on the soffits, fascia and ceiling of the home.
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Karl and Rebecca Mench’s home is full of sounds. On any given day, you’ll hear people doing business, friends dropping by, kids playing both inside and out, the voices of visiting neighbors—even the occasional power tool humming away.
Karl’s workspace gives new meaning to the term corner office.
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It’s a busy place with a serene backdrop. Fashioned primarily out of wood, concrete and steel, it’s both airy and grounded, recognizably different from neighboring homes and yet completely assimilated into its environment. It’s a place of contradictions, maybe—but one that sits beautifully tucked away in Kailua’s Coconut Grove district.
The home is still a job site (the first phase of the remodel is not quite finished, and the couple plan to do more work in the future), but it’s already coming into its own as one of Karl’s original designs. With the help of associate designer and metal fabricator Michael Nelms and the rest of his team, Karl has transformed what was once a tiny, 900-square-foot cottage into a fully integrated home and office, just shy of 3,000 square feet, from which he operates his full-service architecture/design/build company, Concept 2 Completion.
Karl started his company just five years ago and has been in the architecture business independently for seven years. He has designed and built homes for clients in Kailua, Lanikai, Diamond Head, Manoa and Hawaii Kai. When it came to renovating his own, he knew he’d want to incorporate his and his family’s wishes and dreams into the space. Naturally, that’s just what he and Rebecca did.
“Architecturally, what you see is something really different,” he says. “The idea was to bring something progressive into the area that would bring things up. That was the big picture. I didn’t necessarily want to keep the aesthetics of the old home. I wanted this to become the new thing.”
An open floor plan is one of the hallmarks of this home. Thick walls anchor the space, but few dividing walls exist. Steel beams add the look of thin lines to balance the modern, streamlined structural feeling throughout.
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The result? A place where life and work run side by side. “We had a home office downstairs originally, which needed some space,” he says. So he added a second level to the home, which became his company’s new work place. It now includes several desks, a workspace for Rebecca, who keeps the books for the business, as well as a long table area (usually strewn with plans) used for meetings, lunches and a place for 4-year-old Gabriel to draw pictures—or just talk to mom and dad while they work. This unique area seems suspended over the floor below thanks to its connection to a glass bridge (yes, Karl assures me, you can walk on glass that thick) and its openness to the floor below. The space also includes a small bar and refrigerator area and a second-story lanai as well as a half bath. There’s even space for little Evangeline, just shy of 1 year old, to sit and play.
Unlike most home offices, which are designed to be closed off from their surroundings for privacy, the Menches chose to open the office to the rest of the home—and to the outdoors. This kind of integration works just fine for the family. “To me, the idea of having a closed-off office means you ignore everything you’re designing about,” Karl explains. “Whether it be people running around, kids outside or the environment you’re in, if you close those things off, how will you have those experiences?”
Opening the workspace to life at home also meant opening it up to the outdoors. To that end, the upstairs space features giant sliding wood windows and large panes of glass fused at the corners. When the trade winds come through, the upstairs office gets wonderful breezes (Karl has fashioned at least one company-logo paperweight to keep plans from blowing away) and beautiful, natural light. A tall avocado tree in the backyard fills the frame of one window, giving the space a tree-house feel.
Just inside the front gate, outdoor and indoor spaces blend seamlessly. A water feature provides tranquil sound. Outdoor furniture by Dedon, from Pacific Home, provides stylish, weather-resistant seating.
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“We’ve got some great views of the mountains,” Karl says. “The idea was to have views everywhere … to blur the line between what’s inside and what’s outside.”
As the home continues to grow, it also continues to be an adaptive space, where new ideas bring new structures and concepts to life. Both Mike and Karl love to talk about some of the home’s more off-the-cuff design elements. The 14-foot-high front door is a great example. “The open glass edge of the doors was designed when we saw the rainbowlike light spectrums coming off of loose pieces of glass that were sitting in the yard waiting to be installed,” says Karl. Now, when the sun shines through the door’s glass edge, rainbows appear on the landing.
Downstairs, telltale signs of the couple’s personalities abound, including the blue-and-brown wavy design painted on the living room wall. Karl painted it based on a dish pattern Rebecca liked. Large black-and-white photos on stretched canvas depicting the kids and other family members hang on the walls. Rebecca, who considers photography a hobby, took them herself. She hopes to hang more photos of Karl’s work in the office above. Outside, a water feature babbles in the front yard, anchoring the outdoor space. It was one of the first ideas the couple had for their home. But in true construction-site fashion (the couple notes with a bit of tongue-in-cheek humor), it’s one of the last elements to be completed. “It’s not supposed to be an inside/outside space,” says Karl. “It’s meant to be more interactive.”
An outdoor seating area just off the kitchen makes a great spot for lounging. (Photo by Lora Lamm)
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Like the rest of the home, the outdoor area provides a seamless transition from one spot to another, a perfect bridge from work to play and a creative haven. “In residential work, your interaction with architecture is your interaction with life,” Karl says. He need only step into his own home to see his theory in action.
“The shag ottoman (lower-right) and sublime green Capri chair (above) add life and personality to the home,” says Jennifer Johnson, co-owner of Pacific Home. “I also recommend adding floor coverings to soften the space,” she says.
