Ocean Home magazine is for people who love the luxury oceanfront lifestyle, from home design and decor to world-class beach resorts, villas, hotels, and destinations.
Issue link: http://read.uberflip.com/i/12143
The dramatic entryway with its high ceiling makes guests and the homeowners feel as if they’re walking into a luxurious hotel every day. W 58 hen you get two creative forces together, it’s not uncommon to have a fireworks display of ideas light up a room. At least it’s a pretty common occurrence for the husband-and-wife architectural team of Jim and Karen LeCron of Arr/LeCron Architects, Inc. in Santa Barbara, who share a passion for creating dreamy getaways from California to Hawaii. Their current project, a mere four months on the drawing board, took them to Maui, where they decided to build a home that mirrors all the details of a resort. The difference? This is your own private beachfront resort, and once you are here, you can choose to cocoon yourself in your suite and meet your friends by the pool only after you’ve melted your stress away. The idea for this particular home came to them several years ago when the couple was vacationing in Maui. While they loved the island, they had grown tired of staying in hotel rooms and condominiums that felt confining and cramped af- ter a few days, and it occurred to them that they were not alone. “We have a vacation home on Lake Tahoe, and we have friends and family come there,” Jim says. “So we thought how much fun it would be to build a vacation home in Hawaii, but with a resort-theme twist.” In fact, while attending the University of California at Berkeley, Karen wrote her thesis on resort design at Lake Tahoe’s Squaw Valley Ski Resort and learned first-hand from countless interviews what it is that people look for in a destination resort. Together with a few other couples, they ended up purchas- ing this magnificent slice of Maui oceanfront property, with views of Molokai and Lanai, and decided this would be the perfect site for their mini-resort. The home sits in the neighborhood known as the Jewel of Kahana and is minutes from Kapalua Bay, known as the home to one of the world’s best beaches. “It’s a place we have been coming to for years and years. It’s a good destination for families; it’s very kid friendly, and there are fabulous res- taurants and lots of amenities,” Karen says. The couple laid out the design plans for the home by thinking about all those details that create the resort expe- rience—from the private rooms to the common spaces in resorts and how they all function. Then they thought about how to translate those experiences into the scale of a home. “We imagined ourselves in the space and visualized in three dimensions what the experience would be like. Part of that process was the dream or fantasy aspect,” Karen explains. And just as you’d find at a resort, the home boasts individ- ual suites. These have been designed with pocket doors that