Laure Joliet. Art: © Odili Donald Odita/Berggruen Gallery, San Francisco.
When a Bay Area family contacted Oakland-based Redmond Aldrich Design to devise their dream home, the wife, Christina, didn’t share much information. She omitted that her husband, Andre Iguodala, is a Golden State Warriors superstar.
“Christina is very low-key,” recounts founder Chloe Redmond Warner, who led the project alongside senior designer Taylor Shanahan. After briefing Warner’s team on the concept she had in mind for their 7,000-square-foot and five-bedroom house—she wanted an understated yet modern French-inspired aesthetic with lots of room to host family and friends—Christina mentioned, offhandedly, to Shanahan that the house would require a fair amount of custom-made furniture. “She told me, ‘My husband is very tall,’” Shanahan recalls, “and after pausing for a moment, she added, ‘And all of his friends are very tall.’”
Despite the peripatetic nature of the NBA—over the past 18 years, Andre has also played for Philadelphia, Denver, and Miami—when Christina contacted Redmond Aldrich (after finding out the firm had designed one of her favorite stores), it was because the family were finally ready to put down permanent roots. “Our son will be graduating in a few years, so the idea of relocating in the middle of high school didn’t feel right,” says Christina, who met her husband as high school classmates in their hometown of Springfield, Illinois. Warner, similarly, is also a Bay Area transplant. After graduating from Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design in 2005, she relocated to Oakland and founded Redmond Aldrich, which has since become known for its atmospheric spaces that teem with old-world details and channel breezy California style.
Indeed, the Iguodala home feels like the epitome of California living, complete with a sprawling backyard filled with native plants and views over the Redwood forests beyond. “The house is very bright; there’s a lot of light there,” Warner says. She met the airy architecture with a neutral palette of whites, grays, and natural textures, like stone and glossy dark-stained wood. For instance, in the formal living room—which boasts double-height ceilings and faces the pool—they chose furniture that would elicit a calm yet luxurious vibe: a made-to-measure speckled gray sofa from Egg Collective, cream bouclé wool armchairs from CB2, a modernist-inspired travertine table by Lawson-Fenning, and an oak lamp by Lostine. However, above the white marble-lined fireplace, they added a burst of color in the form of an abstract painting by Nigerian American artist Odili Donald Odita, which provides a vivid sense of contrast to the otherwise light-toned space.
“The architecture and design are quite muted and restrained,” Warner points out. “But the art adds so much vibrancy.” In fact, over the past several years the couple has been building up an extensive portfolio of contemporary art. “Supporting Black artists is paramount for us,” Christina explains. Hers and Andre’s collection has grown to include pieces by pop artist Rello, Turner Prize–winner Chris Ofili, and British installation artist Isaac Julien. “Some of our favorite pieces are the photos by Oakland-based artist Sadie Barnett,” she continues, referring to the portraits of the artist’s father that hang in the pink-walled dining room. “They evoke a sense of familiarity and are palatable for anyone with an art background or not.” Christina adds, “I knew I didn’t want my home to feel like a museum, which could be easy given the stature of the space and ceiling heights. I wanted it to invite guests to actually enjoy our home.”
Elsewhere in the house, Warner and Shanahan introduced color via deftly deployed patterns: a botanical hand-painted mural incorporated into the primary bedroom’s custom headboard, a butterfly-adorned Peg Norriss wallpaper in the guest bathroom, bold stripes in a kid’s room, and panels featuring a black-and-white forest illustration in the dining room (found at Anthropologie).
As effortless as the home now seems, the project was not without its challenges. “We were in the design phase when the stay-in-place order was announced,” Warner reveals, referring to California’s early 2020 COVID-19 lockdowns. Predictably, Andre, who off the court is an active investor in tech and business, found himself conducting his meetings virtually. This led Warner and her team to rethink their plans for the home office, which would now become the Zoom room—a first for the firm.
“I wanted to display my collections of books with a home library feel to it,” Andre explains of what he imagined for the newly conceived space. “It was important to create a nice background,” Warner agrees. She made sure to include Andre’s favorite titles, like Barack Obama’s Dreams From My Father and Warren Buffet’s Snowball Effect. “But what’s successful about this room is that it’s not only beautiful from the Zoom angle. It has a high ceiling, beautiful art, patterned curtains, and timeless furniture.” However, the new endeavor also begat another first for Redmond Aldrich Design. “We caught the Zoom room on ESPN,” Warner says, “which, for us, was very exciting.”
