This is not a long page, and that is deliberate. We publish completed work as completed work, and studies as studies — nothing dressed up as more than it is.
The Madbury Residence began as a Central Coast house that had been added to, patched, and worked around for decades — good bones under fifty years of compromise. We took it back to the frame. Everything that followed, from structure and systems to the last cabinet pull, was carried by this studio: design developed with our licensed engineering partners, construction management of our own project, and interiors specified and procured room by room.
That continuity decided the outcome. The people who drew the floor plan sat in the budget meetings; the people who chose the white oak stood in the room when it was installed. There was no handoff between design and build, so nothing was lost in one. Decisions that usually die between three firms — a window moved four inches, a threshold detail resolved in the field — were made in a single conversation.
The renovation kept the house honest to its site. Rooms were reordered around the light instead of the old plumbing runs. The material palette is quiet and local in temperament — plaster, white oak, unlacquered brass — chosen to wear in rather than wear out. Nothing in the house asks for attention; all of it rewards it.
Madbury is the working proof of how SloIvy operates: development, design, construction management, and interiors under one name, on one project, answerable to one standard. It is the model for everything we take on next.
How the studio worksBetween projects, the studio draws. These concept studies are how we test ideas against real Central Coast terrain — siting, massing, material — before a site or a client asks the question. None of them is built work, and none pretends to be.
A study for a low, single-story residence set along a vineyard edge. It explores how a house would sit below the ridgeline and hold the morning fog — deep eaves, a long east-facing porch, and rooms that would open to the rows rather than the road.
A bluff-top study in salt air and wind. It explores what a coastal house would need to endure here — a compact, weather-hardened envelope, courtyard shelter carved from the plan, and glazing placed for the water without surrendering the walls to it.
An interior study in light and restraint. It explores how a downtown San Luis Obispo interior would carry the studio's palette — plaster, woven fiber, warm low lighting — and how few materials a finished room would actually need.
If you are considering a project on the Central Coast — or you are a vendor partner who works to this standard — we would like to hear from you.