mt. tiburon

architect: ​martin stuart

builder: hadley construction

landscape designer: william peters

lighting designer: hiram banks lighting design

photography: matthew millman

this marin county home is the canvas for an art collector's fresh start. the home displays a staggering number of artworks by marcel duchamp, man ray, joseph beuys, louise bourgeois, eva hesse, robert gober, richard serra, gerhard richter and many others.

gary was tasked with designing a space that, at every turn, provided a blank canvas for sculpture, paintings, and art installations. original redwood boards were white washed, extending the neutral palette and providing maximum flexibility for the constantly evolving collection. this kind of environment calls for furnishings that complement the art without distracting from it.

gary’s vision for the home was an adaptive backdrop that would accommodate both new acquisitions and the flexible placement of existing works. “it was not the kind of place where you put the goya over the sofa and decorate the room around it,” says hutton. “we all understood that nothing was ever going to stay in the same place; the art was always going to shift.”

hutton chose subtly shifting shades of white to bring cohesion to the 9,000-square-foot space, an achromatic palette that also enabled him to privilege texture and materiality. on the twelve-foot dining table, for example, he used panel tec, an aircraft material surrounded by aluminum honeycomb. the choice allows light to pass through, generating a glow on the floor below, which subconsciously grounds the room in light. the overall result is a live-in museum.