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The residence is configured as two separate volumes,
with the guest building organized as a series of three
private suites. “They are very social,” Ehrlich
says of the couple. “Leland is the kind of guy
who will bring along his oyster-shucking knife to a
market in Bordeaux. Both he and Marian are very warm
people, bons vivants.”
The couple’s engagement with their neighborhood
is a case in point: It isn’t every client who
asks the architect to build a pétanque court
in front of the residence—the Provençal
equivalent of boccie played with a hollow metal ball.
It is a public extension of their private residence. “When
we’re out playing pétanque, people
will ask what we’re doing,” Leland Zeidler
explains. “It’s a nice way to establish
new friends.”
The Zeidlers spend much of their time in the living
room, designed as a series of textural, intersecting
planes with a tall, shallow Rumford fireplace at the
core, chosen by the architect for height and proportion
as well as its efficient conduction of heat. “You
can slide the door to connect to the courtyard on a
warm day or be enclosed on a cold wintry night with
the fire going,” Ehrlich points out.
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