Modern Oahu Minimalist Home with Ocean Views in Makiki Heights

Surrounded my mammoth trees dripping with orchids and vines, on the edge of a forest making it hard to believe you are only minutes from downtown Honolulu, this modernist version of a light filled tree house is 2182 Round Top Drive – a 3 bedroom, 4 1/2 bath home designed and built by Vincent Tai, AIA for his wife and himself to retire to after a career designing homes for others.

2182 Round Top Drive (MLS# 1213653)

Pacific Ocean View

Clean lines and a neutral palette throughout with punches of color here and there keeps the interior cool and non-competitive with the star of the show, the gorgeous full on view of Honolulu and the Pacific.

All rooms have this view, and yet, for as open as this house is, there is no infringement of privacy. Some good choices of materials here as well, with Corian not only used as countertops, but as staircase treads.

A House of Light in Makiki Heights Overlooking Honolulu

Those pops of color keep the eye from tiring of the neutral palette, and the use of a bright, sunny yellow on the exposed roof trusses under the skylight have the added bonus of coloring the light shining through – in a way, Vincent Tai has found the Modernist’s alternative to a stained glass window.

Upstairs, the bedrooms are able to closed off by means of another ‘old idea made new’: shoji screens that use corrugated plastic panels in place of rice paper. A beautifully blue-tiled, 20 meter lap pool doubles as landscape from the lower studio space.

This is the house of a minimalist, but one that lives in Hawaii, which may seem like a contradiction in terms at first, but not when expressed by Vincent Tai, AIA.