Daniel Joseph Chenin Balances Monumentality with Intimacy

This week’s instalment of the Project of the Week series features a luxury residential design by 2025 SBID Awards Finalist, Daniel Joseph Chenin.

Designed by Daniel Joseph Chenin, FAIA, Tombolo is a private residence that unites architecture and interiors into a singular, immersive composition. Commissioned to lead both disciplines, the studio drew inspiration from the tombolo landform, a natural bridge, as a metaphor for the seamless integration of form, material, and light. Deep colonnades and sculptural ribbing lend rhythm and depth to the exterior, while the interior features tactile finishes and bespoke furnishings, evoking a layered sense of warmth and restraint. Each space balances monumentality with intimacy, offering a living narrative that redefines luxury as something experiential, emotional, and continuously unfolding.

What was the client’s brief?

The brief was for a desert residence that would transcend function, a place at once private sanctuary and social stage. The clients asked for a design that balanced intimacy with grandeur, where architecture and interiors dissolved into a single composition. Every element, from materiality to movement through the home, needed to feel considered and timeless.

What inspired the design of the project?

The design drew from the tombolo landform, a natural bridge uniting separate bodies of land. We interpreted this as a metaphor for connection: between the house and its desert site, between shelter and openness, between daily ritual and elevated experience. The result is a residence where bold exterior geometries give way to layered, tactile interiors that soften and humanize the whole.

What was the toughest hurdle your team overcame during the project?

The challenge lay in reconciling the extremes of the desert environment with the delicacy of experiential design. Deep colonnades, apertures, and thermal mass were introduced for climate control, but these solutions had to feel like part of a larger narrative rather than technical responses. The greatest accomplishment was making complexity appear effortless.

What was your team’s highlight of the project?

The most rewarding moment was walking the completed home as a sequence of curated experiences. From the oculus framed arrival court to the stair wrapped in hand painted wall covering, every threshold feels cinematic. The highlight was not a single gesture, but the realization that the house itself reads like a story, with chapters of intimacy, spectacle, and discovery.

Why did you enter the SBID Awards?

The SBID Awards celebrate design as both craft and cultural dialogue. Entering allowed us to share Tombolo with an international audience that values projects pushing beyond aesthetics to something immersive and emotionally resonant. It’s about contributing to a global conversation on design excellence.

What has being an Award Finalist meant to you and your business?

Becoming a finalist has been affirming for our studio and our collaborators. It signals that a design rooted in site, story, and sensory experience resonates far beyond its desert setting. For us, the recognition reinforces that design, when conceived as an unfolding narrative, has the power to connect universally.

Questions answered by Daniel Joseph Chenin, FAIA, Founder of Daniel Joseph Chenin.