“If I had built this house after design school, it would have felt like a warehouse, all cold concrete and glass,” says Susie St. John, founder of Embrio Design Studio in San Diego. But supporting her mother through years battling cancer in environs ill-suited to someone with impaired mobility fundamentally redefined Susie’s concept of home.
The 2,740-square-foot, butterfly-roofed house she designed for herself, husband Rick, and their 11-year-old son, Otto, in Carlsbad, California, is squarely focused on family, including extended family in the area. “I wanted it to feel like a home for everyone, like somebody giving you a hug,” she says.
Four bedrooms connect to a double-height kitchen/living/dining space—half the size of the whole house—where sunlight streams through a wall of steel-framed windows. An everyone’s-welcome, twelve-and-a-half-foot-long table accommodates large…
