Nicole Hollis and Brooks Walker create paradise in Northern California

The interior designer and the architect teamed up on a warm, contemporary Bay Area home that’s in tune with its surroundings.

Some 10 years ago, a couple who had been working in finance in Hong Kong returned home to California’s Bay Area with the intention of building a house in Tiburon on a hillside that sloped down to the Pacific. They had discovered this special property, with its picturesque wind-gnarled trees and spectacular bay views, several years before, when they spent a summer renting the mid-century ranch house that occupied it.