MALUHIA
YEAR: 2013 LOCATION: KAHALA, HONOLULU
Maluhia, which means ‘peaceful’ in Hawaiian, is the title given to this modest Kahala Estate. The owners’ primary goals were to create a home of privacy, respite and most importantly, healthy living. Through extensive site visits, client exchanges and rigorous sketching & modeling, Maluhia evolved into a contemporary ‘island living’ experience full of indoor-outdoor exchanges and peaceful encounters.
MALUHIA
©2014 Photos by David Franzen
Programmatically, Maluhia is a single family residence with extended family accommodations. Extended family is an important component in Hawaii(an) culture. This residence is designed for a family to share stories, good cheer and private moments of reflection, all reinforcing maluhia (‘peacefulness’).
The concept behind Maluhia is quite simple… achieve peacefulness through excellence in aesthetic design, functional simplicity and sound building performance. This contemporary building style (if one must label it) is driven by building performance coupled with human experience. More traditional residential styles, although wonderful experientially, struggle to achieve this level of passive systems design.