Ascaya debuts first showcase home in Henderson — PHOTOS

San Francisco-based SB Architects designed the first of Ascaya's six "Inspirational Homes," which serve as community showcases. Matt Page was the lead designer for home, which will be listed for nearly $8 million. (Ascaya)

The master bedroom has a disappearing wall. (Ascaya)

The home has an indoor-outdoor living design. (Ascaya)

The home has open spaces. (Ascaya)

The home was designed with a resort feel. (Ascaya)

San Francisco-based SB Architects designed this showcase home for Ascaya to show off its sweeping views of the Las Vegas Strip. (Ascaya)

A pie-shape is generally not considered a desirable lot feature, yet SB Architects chose one with that exact form for its inaugural foray into the local real estate market. Last year, the company was tapped to create one of six showcase homes in Ascaya, a Henderson luxury community, to stimulate buyer’s imagination.

The finished home is a glowing example of contemporary design floating at 2,514 feet near the edge of a bluff, like meringue on a crème pie.

The challenge created by the half-acre lots’ shape influenced but didn’t dominate the design, according to Matt Page, LEED AP, vice president at SB Architects, who led the design team.

“We chose it to show that there (are) multiple opportunities on all the lots. They all have fantastic views … we wanted to utilize the front and the backyards of the house” to their maximum, he explained. Most important was to “design for the site, which includes the weather, the climate, the shade opportunities, the wind.”

SB Architects is based in San Francisco and has extensive experience designing hotels around the world, including projects for CTF Development Inc., the developer of Ascaya. It aimed to give the project a resort feel, Page said. “We wanted to create this sense of decompression or escape from your daily business. Because we have a lot of hospitality and hotel experience, we really wanted to incorporate that decompression feeling into this house.”

They accomplished this by creating different courtyard zones to act as a buffer, starting with the lower-level parking area.

Before entering the house, you pass through a gate leading to a long “arrival courtyard” with walls on the southern side that provide shade from the sun and privacy from neighbors while outside. It’s like a partially walled-in, open-air front yard, complete with a water feature.

“You’re automatically feeling a sense of privacy, and you start to build up to the view,” Page said.

Between this space and the central floor plan is a hallway framed by two sets of parallel, disappearing glass walls leading into an expansive great room with another set of glass walls on the north side. When all three walls are opened, voila! An instant visual feast of the valley.

“It’s a procession of spaces leading up to that wow view of The Strip,” Page said. “It also allows you to open up the house on both sides to maximize square footage.”

The expanded, horizontal floor plan feels like a seamless entertaining space — from the front yard out to the back of the home, where the rectangular pool abuts a sunken fire pit. The spa is around the corner, just outside a multiple-purpose room for guests, or an extra entertainment space, again with disappearing walls. The room is separate from the rest of the house and is accessed via a bridge — not exactly a casita, but separate from the main bedrooms. Nearby is a stairway leading to a rooftop deck at the tip of the “pie,” taking advantage of the western view, including the Ascaya landscape and the Strip. An iron fence around the property’s perimeter allows patio loungers to enjoy the view.

The wider part of the lot is where SB placed the garage, below a wing with three bedrooms and an office. The master bedroom and its own living room are on the main floor, with direct access to the pool. The house has six-and-a-half baths.

“We wanted to create a timeless modern architecture that fits within the landscape. So if you look at the silhouette of the house, it steps like the Ascaya landscape,” said Page, referring to the many horizontal plateaus that are carved into the McCullough Mountain Range on which the community is being built.

Neutral, understated materials were used throughout the home — lots of gray and off-white tiles warmed up with wood planks on the ceilings and a wood-look porcelain tile on a few outdoor areas.

Sun West Custom Homes managed the building process for SB, a service the Las Vegas company is providing more frequently, said President Dan Coletti.

“Generally we are building homes that we design ourselves, but this is one of the times where we built somebody else’s plan,” he said.

The lot has “awesome views,” Coletti added, but it was quite a challenge to build on. “Not only was it tough to design but tough to construct on, because it was triangular point, and it fell off in all directions.”

Getting materials onto the site was difficult, because cranes could only come from the street side.

“But at the end of the day, it turned out beautiful,” he said.

At an open house held there in March, Realtor/broker Annette Daskalos of ACD Properties Real Estate said: “The views of every room of the house are spectacular. SB Architects and Sunwest Custom Homes did an amazing job creating an open and inviting floor plan on a challenging pie-shape lot.”

Page praised the collaborative efforts of all parties who brought the project to fruition.

“Creating that teamwork and combined vision to get this house done right is the best way to do it, because you’re going to get a fantastic product.”

This house is the first of six inspiration homes commissioned by Ascaya to be completed. Four additional inspiration homes are under construction, with the final home scheduled to start construction later this year. The homes will serve as showcases for the luxury community for about two years, said Darin Marques, Ascaya sales manager.

Three private residences have been finished, and the community’s clubhouse is scheduled to open this summer. There are 313 total lots planned for development, and Page is already meeting with potential clients for SB’s next project in Ascaya.