Hankering for not just one refreshing change, but a series of them? Take a pictorial tour of the home David Kelley recently listed. The design maven and champion of the creative process recently put the house on the market, and he’s looking to transfer ownership for $14.995 million.
The home is the remarkable product of collaboration between Kelley and architect Ettore Sottsass; it was constructed around 2000, measures over 8,000 square feet, and contains four bedrooms and 6.5 baths.
From the entrance—which evokes the invitational and communal nature of civic building design—the home is a tour of the imaginative. From free-floating storage to the incongruous juxtaposition of soft arches and hard angles, and alterations of materials that are surprising to say the least, the home is a testament to Kelley’s assertion that creativity is not a haphazard condition or reflex, but a way of thinking, and a consistent means of approaching problem-solving.
Throughout the property tones vary wildly, textural and geometric interplay occurs freely, and 20th century architectural influences co-exist in a lilting pastiche. There’s no anxiety in influence in the effect, though; instead, the impression is of the endlessly playful, a home liberated from a need to establish definite stylistic meaning by expressing style itself. It’s a little like a Paul Desmond improvisation.
The home rests amid about four and a half acres in Woodside. It incorporates a full equestrian center.
David Kelley is founder of design consulting firm Ideo, as well as the Stanford school of design—the Stanford d.school—where he is a professor.
