Firm Name: Studio Schicketanz

Principal: Mary Ann Schicketanz

Headquarters: Carmel, California

Accolades: Forbes Architecture’s “America’s Top 200 Residential Architects,” 2025; Forbes Architecture’s “America’s Best-in-State Residential Architects,” 2025

House Name: Big Sur Cabin

Location: Big Sur, California

Area & Layout: 1,194 square feet, 1 BR, 2 BA

Architectural Photographer: Joe Fletcher (joefletcher.com)

tudio Schicketanz designs outstanding houses that aren’t designed to stand out. Their projects burrow into the landscape, establishing an intimate connection with nature through retractable walls of glass, natural materials, green roofs and massing that diminishes the home’s scale without compromising its utility. Faced with a fire-prone site in a dark California ravine, studio founder Mary Ann Schicketanz designed a small, segmented cabin that pairs fire-resistant siding with warm, redwood-accented interiors that harness sunlight through skylights and clerestories, animating the 1,200-square-foot interior.

FRED ALBERT, Forbes Deputy Editor, Architecture: In terms of scale, scope and identity, how does this project fit into your overall body of residential work?

MARY ANN SCHICKETANZ: It’s rare that we get to work on a small-scale project with so many physical challenges. The site was very shady and damp, choked with roots and invasive species, vulnerable to wildfires, and serviced by an untreated surface well and leaky septic system. Getting to restore this small parcel as an example for the neighborhood, and contributing to the rehabilitation of the creek and the redwood forest—while at the same time creating a modest, barrier-free home for an elderly couple—was very rewarding.

ALBERT: Creatively, from a design problem-solving viewpoint, what are a few of the most satisfying solutions that came together here?

SCHICKETANZ: We were able to break down the overall size of the home into smaller volumes, which blend nicely with the scale of the neighborhood’s historic logging cabins. Despite the steep terrain and the dense root zones of the redwood forest, we were able to design a barrier-free pathway from the parking area to the cabin’s front door. Also, the bottom of the canyon is very dark. By studying the path of the sun during the seasons, we came up with fenestrations that follow the sparse sunlight in clerestory windows, skylights and strategically placed windows—such as the bookshelf window in the great room, which captures the last sunlight on summer afternoons.

ALBERT: And what’s next for the studio?

SCHICKETANZ: In addition to my passion for design intervention (in the landscape or an urban environment), I am interested in sustainability—beyond energy neutrality and the health impacts of a building. We are studying carbon and are hoping to deliver a carbon-neutral home in the near future that would reduce carbon emissions from daily activities, as well as the embodied carbon “locked into” the building from the manufacturing, transporting and assembly of materials.

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