Polychromatic Stained Glass Animates This $5 Million Contemporary in California’s Carmel Valley

Marcel Sedletzky was born in Russia and received his architecture education in Austria in the late 1940s. He emigrated to Los Angeles before settling in the late 1950s about 400 miles north, in Carmel-by-the-Sea, where he soon opened his own firm. In 1971, several years before he gave up practicing architecture full time and began a long career teaching at Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo, he completed a convention-defying residence in Carmel Valley’s picturesque La Rancheria neighborhood that’s just hit the market for the very first time for almost $5 million.

For the project, which is about 12 miles inland from the ocean, Sedletzky took his cues from the work of two of trailblazing architects, bringing the clean modernism of Le Corbusier to the more organic style of Frank Lloyd Wright. Shielded by ancient oaks and towering sycamore trees, the angular, multilevel home is hidden from the narrow, sleepy lane on which it sits amid a 1.35-acre parcel. Listings held by Courtney Stanley and Skip Marquard of Sotheby’s International Realty–Carmel Valley Brokerage show the 4,900-square-foot geometric stunner has five bedrooms and five-and-a-half bathrooms, including a separate guest house.

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Designed for a relaxed relationship with the landscape, vast walls of glass bring the natural scenery inside, while glass sliders allow for seamless transitions to the outdoors. Under a vaulted ceiling, the wall-to-wall carpeted living room includes a sunken conversation pit with a custom sofa opposite a fireplace set into a sculpted wall of exposed aggregate.

Throughout are wood-clad walls and ceilings along with numerous instances of polychromatic stained glass used in unexpected and innovative ways, such as the ring of multicolored glass around the dining room’s one-of-a-kind fireplace, a huge brick cylinder wrapped in steel that floats above the floor. The nearby galley kitchen includes a breakfast bar and updated appliances, while a towering wall of windows connects to the gardens.

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An open-tread floating staircase climbs to the upper level, where private quarters are as unorthodox as the public areas. One bedroom has a huge window in the pitched ceiling for stargazing, another occupies a lofted space that hangs over the kitchen and dining area, and a third has a built-in desk, while the guest house includes a private sitting room.

The property also includes a small study just off the kitchen, a barrel-vaulted wine cellar, and a games room, along with a three-car garage and a two-car carport.

A sunken entry courtyard includes a tiled fountain and terraced planters, while the back of the house spills onto a large deck above a swimming pool shaded by mature trees.

Courtney Stanley and Skip Marquard of Sotheby’s International Realty – Carmel Valley Brokerage

Click here for more photos of the Marcel Sedletzky-designed home.

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