22win A Secret Masterpiece by the Father of Hawaiian Modernism
ON A SUNDAY afternoon in Honolulu in the mid-1950s, a local psychiatrist, Linus Pauling Jr., visited Vladimir Ossipoff at home to discuss a project that he hoped the architect would consider building for his family. Pauling, then in his early 30s, found the master of Hawaiian Modernism sitting on the floor repairing a paper lamp by another great midcentury designer, Isamu Noguchi. Though Pauling and Ossipoff had hardly spoken before their meeting, he decided to roll up his sleeves and help fix the delicate cylindrical lantern. As Pauling shared his dreams of building an elemental house from locally sourced materials with lots of space for books and an open kitchen, dining and sitting room where he could cook and converse with friends and family, a bond that would span generations was born. By the end of their meeting, the two men had not only mended the lampshade (Ossipoff’s granddaughter donated it to the Noguchi Museum in New York City this past July) but Ossipoff had sketched the beginnings of Pauling’s house, which would be successfully completed within just a couple of years.
ImageThe living room’s fireplace is a spot for gathering, surrounded by a Finn Juhl chair, a Tom Hirai coffee table and a bust of the homeowner’s father-in-law, the biochemist and antinuclear peace activist Linus Pauling Sr., a winner of two Nobel Prizes.Credit...Mariko ReedCloistered on a ridge of Oahu’s Koolau Range — a 37-mile-long, accordion-shaped series of mountains that bisects the island — the house, Kuahiwi, is as both Pauling and Ossipoff had intended: an expansive but minimal structure that exists harmoniously with the surrounding nature. Fifteen hundred feet above sea level and hidden from passers-by who crest Round Top Drive, a canopy-covered road with many hairpin turns, the house delivers both privacy (another Pauling prerequisite) and procession (an Ossipoff specialty). A steep driveway is flanked by dramatic thickets of tall bamboo. Shaded by two old-growth magnolia trees, the six-bedroom residence was plotted by Ossipoff in a series of structures arranged in the shape of a hexagon, resembling a giant honeycomb that fits snugly into the craggy mountainscape. Kuahiwi is positioned to catch the microclimate’s strong trade winds and daily showers, which obviate the need for air-conditioning and provide potable water by channeling rain from the corrugated roof into two 15,000-gallon cisterns. The angular exterior, made of smooth planks of redwood, is blunted by a rough-edged base of cement and basalt, the local blue-gray lava rock once used to anchor boats in Honolulu’s harbor. A cavernous breezeway was first an outdoor play den for Pauling’s five children and later became an ad hoc carport for a stable of vintage Porsche 356s that Pauling and his second wife, Stephanie, would restore. With its clear view to the swaying emerald green bamboo that buffers the perimeter, the darkling space blurs the lines between the house and the wild tropics beyond it, alive with birdsong and vine-choked walking trails.
ImageIn the hallway, a kimono box and a Berber rug from the Atlas Mountains.Credit...Mariko ReedImageIn a guest bedroom, Hans Wegner Wishbone chairs and Royal System shelving by Poul Cadovius.Credit...Mariko Reed“THE HEXAGONAL MODULE, nobody had ever seen that before,” says Stephanie, 78, in the kitchen-sitting-dining room of Kuahiwi beneath the vaulted ceiling of lime-washed Douglas fir. “It probably raised Linus’s eyebrows a bit,” she says, but Linus, a progressive Harvard Medical School graduate whose father was a two-time Nobel laureate biochemist and antinuclear peace activist, was forward thinking enough to appreciate Ossipoff’s pioneering views on environmental conservation and granted him carte blanche. On this cool August morning, Stephanie is sitting on one of the house’s many built-in pieces of furniture designed by Ossipoff: a low, wide sofa upholstered in cream-colored bouclé. Across from her, Ossipoff’s granddaughter Keira Alexandra, 56, a graphic designer and teacher at the Rhode Island School of Design, is seated on one of a pair of chairs that Linus fashioned from the seats of a 1930s Riley car and fitted with legs carved from koa, a dark native wood, by the local Modernist sculptor Merle Boyer. Sunlight streams through six large windowpanes in the spare dining area, casting a muted glow over a narrow 12-seat table and the adjacent counters in the kitchen, which are also carved from koa. Over the past decades, the two women have developed a deep bond, spending summer visits together and supporting each other through major family losses: the Paulings comforted Alexandra during the passing of her grandparents and mother and, more recently, Alexandra was there for Stephanie after Linus’s death at 98 in 2023. The women discuss the magic of Kuahiwi around a coffee table designed by Linus and a copper-hooded fireplace that has made the room a central gathering spot over the years: how Linus’s vision for an open kitchen, dining and sitting area was way ahead of its time in the 1950s; how the house’s rooms — which oscillate between compact and expansive — create an intimacy that belies its 6,899-square-foot size. “It’s a big house,” says Stephanie. “It’s a big house, but it’s human,” Alexandra adds. “Each volume accommodates a closeness.”
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