“They’re so family-driven; it’s really fantastic,” says Tim Pfeiffer, a designer and partner in the Seattle design firm Hoedemaker Pfeiffer. “They’re one of those families who actually really loves hanging together. I think there are three little grandkids that just romp around the place. They wanted it so their kids could come down with their families. We put a little gated zone on the hillside that is just off the casita that is specifically a protected zone for really little kids.”
Pfeiffer met his future clients (who wish to remain anonymous for this article) at a party on one of the islands near his native Seattle at the beginning of the pandemic. “Their house is down the beach from mine,” he says. “We’re sitting out on a sunny deck six to eight feet apart, and we all have our masks on. We’re having cocktails and appetizers, and this woman cozies up to me and [says], ‘You’re Tim Pfeiffer. I’ve been dying to meet you. I’ve got a project I want to work with you on.’ I wondered what it could possibly be … and it turned out to be this home in Thunderbird Heights.”
Architects and designers are always wary when approached by potential clients who want to work closely with them on designing their homes. But, Pfeiffer says this was a completely different experience. “I could see their home from mine across the water, so I’d paddleboard over to their house,” he says. “There was a lot of fun to be had after meeting her. She was one of the best collaborators and best clients [one] could hope for. Long before the kids and grandkids, she had had a design practice, [and] she knew her way around the process. It was the way I would work with my own team, and that made it really great to work with her.” (Pfeiffer says she is an excellent artist and painter.)
Pfeiffer’s career to that point had been eclectic, to say the least. He attended the University of Washington, where he studied architecture and took studio classes in painting and sculpture. While still in his 20s, he opened a gallery in Seattle that specialized in art from Latin America and Oceania. The gallery windows attracted so much attention that Pfeiffer was offered a gig as the creative director for a gallery in Santa Clara, California, and then Union Square in San Francisco; he eventually opened seven stores. Success followed success, and he was eventually hired by Ralph Lauren to head the company Global Story Development, where he designed the interiors and facades for stores from Chicago to Tokyo. He was headhunted away by another prestigious firm and continued to travel the world, collecting art and design elements to use in commercial developments.
Pfeiffer and Hoedemaker started their new firm by posing a question to themselves: “How do you marry … the ethos of this architectural space with the client’s understanding of how and where and when they want to live their lives, and putting all those pieces together?”
A local architect was needed for the project, and Pfeiffer could not have found a better one than Javier Segura, owner of Javier Segura Design Inc. of Rancho Mirage. A native of Guatemala, Segura grew up in Miami and earned an architecture degree in San Diego. “I’ve been in the desert for 18 years now,” Segura said as he took a visitor on a tour of the completed Thunderbird Heights home this summer. “Primarily, all my work is [in the seven different communities that comprise Thunderbird]. I’ve probably done 40-odd homes. Right now, I have 12 homes under construction.” Segura, too, was gratified at how well the collaboration worked out. “It was an integral collaboration between the owner, myself, [Pfeiffer], and the landscape architects,” he says. “She really allowed for the project to go through … everyone had a voice. She was involved from day one, but she let everyone do what they had to do.”
The house sits on a full half-acre at the top of Thunderbird Heights and was built in the 1980s, according to Segura. Previous owners put their imprints on the property, though not all of them were advisable. Pfeiffer says the last owner added some Asian-inspired flourishes, such as “a giant Chinese monster gate … it was sort of a bronze and turquoise-looking gate … there was a narrow but monumental set of stairs that went up from [the street] … and [at the top] were these two, five-foot-tall, white marble dogs.”
Aside from superficial aesthetics, the team had larger issues to deal with. The home stood away from its dramatic backdrop rather than embracing it. Pfeiffer says his client said, ‘Let’s engage this beautiful setting. Let’s bring the desert down to us … and the Valley up to us.” Pfeiffer and Segura realized one of the house’s biggest issues was that the layout of the interior didn’t take maximum advantage of the dramatic views of both the Valley and the surrounding mountainsides. The original kitchen was tucked away on the far side of the house, and the master bedroom was on the opposite side. Their solution was to flip them so the kitchen became the heart of the house, with views of both the Valley and the mountains.
Pfeiffer says the owners love to entertain. (“There are quite a few people from Seattle who also own in Thunderbird,” Segura says. “They are major foodies … she’s always putting something out – some new thing that she’s concocted,” Pfeiffer adds.) One of the more interesting features of the kitchen design is a 14-foot island around which family and friends can gather for cocktails and appetizers.
From the kitchen, Segura leads the way to a set of rooms toward the mountain side of the property. These rooms constitute the attached casita, which contains two full bedrooms, two full baths, and a small kitchen. The casita is normally occupied by the kids and their kids, giving everyone privacy when required. The owners’ master bedroom and bathroom are now on the opposite side of the house. A guest room and one of the owner’s private studies are in the middle of the house, near the formal entrance. (He is a voracious reader, and when he doesn’t have a golf club or pickleball racket in hand, he usually carries a book, according to Pfeiffer.) The result is a perfect balance of entertaining spaces (the living room has the cozy but convivial feel of a luxury boutique hotel) and private spaces.
The dark, wood-paneled formal dining room feels curiously different from the rest. Pfeiffer explained that the owners’ main dining room when they’re in town for the season is the expansive patio in front of the kitchen and living room, where they barbecue and dine al fresco overlooking the pool (which is a level down the hillside) and the Valley. “But, the holiday season can be pretty cool in the evenings,” he says. “The idea was to warm things up and give it an interior sense of space. Like the back office, it’s meant to be an evening space, kind of cloistered in with all the warmer, darker tones.”
Pfeiffer’s palette is one of the more impressive aspects of the renovation. “The palette is something that’s very, very familiar and easy in my eye,” he says. “What I loved particularly was this idea of really studying the seasonal landscape, [like] seeing it when the sage begins to dry, and in the spring when the wildflowers start to come up … or the color of light on [the] rock[s]. It all played into the color palette of the house. [The owner] said, ‘I really want this place to disappear as much as it can in its monolithic state.’”
Segura agrees that the almost brutalist look of the original structure was a challenge. But, in addition to using Pfeiffer’s palette, the architect opened up the house to the outside environment. Large windows contribute to bringing the outside indoors. The study, in particular, makes one feel as if the rocky hillside is an expansive wall in the room.
Segura says he loves that he and Pfeiffer were able to connect the entire hillside to the house. The extensive use of limestone was one of the elements that made this effort so successful. Segura refers to many conversations they had with the landscape designers; they asked them not to over-sculpt the landscape and ensure that the property had a connection to its surroundings. He leads the way over to a fire pit on the edge of the property. It's unexpected and rustic – a simple setting where the family can gather at night, light a fire, and feel connected to the boulder-strewn wash below, the starry night above, and each other.
