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"View Slideshow\n\nBy profession, of course, Ron Mann is a designer. But if you were to write his r\u00E9sum\u00E9 based on a sprawling new residence overlooking the Lovall Valley in Sonoma, California, you might call him a Houdini of sculptured spaces, a fearless and spirited conjurer of the never-before seen.\n\n\"You've never seen this before,\" he'll say understatedly, attempting to explain what drove him to design an eight-foot-wide steel dining table capable of spinning like a gigantic lazy Susan, its tapered point bringing to mind a top. \"Don't ask why,\" he adds. \"Ask why not.\"\n\nBy his own admission, the designer works best when he is given free rein. (\"Then, my only restriction is myself,\" he allows.)\n\nThe residence sits on 19 acres of hillside with incomparable views of Sonoma County, Mount Tamalpais and San Francisco Bay. It was already under construction when serendipity intervened\u2014something about a swerving car, a country road and a chance encounter between Conrad Sanchez, who conceived the house with his architect father, Harvey, and Mann, a designer the Sanchezes had long admired whose reputation extends far beyond the valley. They soon recruited him to design the interiors and to architecturally tweak the residence; he added courtyards, stairs and the poolside terrace. \"The plan was to complete the house and then put it on the market,\" says Mann. \"But the realtor got so excited as work was progressing that she couldn't stand it. She brought a couple up to see it, and\u2014wham\u2014they bought it instantly.\"\n\nThey also gave Mann carte blanche to finish the interiors. \"He showed up in Armani jeans and snakeskin boots,\" the wife recalls. \"He's an amazing artist and had a deeply felt connection to this place. I could tell that his vision couldn't be replicated by anybody else.\"\n\nBy his own admission, the designer works best when he is given free rein (\"Then, my only restriction is myself,\" he allows). Mann approaches interiors sculpturally, searching for the juxtapositions of scale, texture and color that will make a given space feel as though it does not resemble any design that has existed before it. \"I like bold design,\" he says of his philosophy. \"I believe in angles, not rectangles. I think they humanize a space. After all, human beings aren't rectilinear.\"\n\nThe great room is a combined kitchen, dining area and living area enveloped by floor-to-ceiling windows that visually bring the live oaks in. The room is defined in large measure by the floor\u2014really a floorscape. Running in ribbons embedded in the concrete are boards of Douglas fir rubbed with metallicized paint. They form subtle paths in a room that might seem intimidating otherwise, intersecting precisely at the juncture where the pointed base of the dining table meets the floor.\n\nThe residence is full of wood\u2014especially fir, bay laurel and eucalyptus. Prime specimens are the two 4,000-pound sofas in the living area, chainsawed out of blue gum. To soften them, Mann designed colorful textured cushions made from Turkish rugs and artist's canvas. \"I like to say I Mondrianed them,\" he says of the furniture.\n\nAt the entrance, a natural-edge cypress plank wraps around a gray stucco wall, the texture of the stucco roughed up to give it a slightly lunar quality. Mann placed the plank low so that guests might sit on it if the spirit moves them (this is California, after all). \"We wanted a modern place, but with natural elements,\" he explains. \"We did not want country cute.\"\n\nBut Mann isn't averse to a healthy dose of theater. Exhibit A in this regard may be the \"photo billboard\" of a huge banana that runs nearly the length of the kitchen, flanked by a graphic pair of perforated aluminum screens, which function almost like stage curtains on Broadway. The wife has taken to calling this area of the residence \"the big banana over the backsplash.\"\n\nIn the main house, Mann also designed two sculptural elements\u2014one above the living area fireplace, painted a \"New York State of Mind\" blue, the other, \"Porsche Alley,\" a hot-green wall that projects into a colonnaded hallway. The nickname refers to 1974 Porsche hot green, a rather poetic homage to his clients, who wanted to spend more time in Sonoma so that the husband could race his extensive collection of cars and motorcycles at nearby Infineon Raceway.\n\nThe designer admits that he is \"kind of unstoppable\"\u2014evident in the master bath, where the free-form tub resembles a soap sculpture and screens are crafted from racks used to dry fruit\u2014a witty spin on Californiana.\n\nThe compound includes a wine cave, the wine country's latest must-have accoutrement. Drilled out of the mountain, this sybaritic lair has sprayed-concrete vaulted ceilings, banquettes and separate rooms for tasting, dining, lounging and having a massage. For Flintstonian verisimilitude, the hillside's exposed natural rock flanks the entrance.\n\nIn the guesthouse, the living room and bedroom are divided by a cutwork linen drapery, while a shower surfaced with broken-edge marble was inspired \"by images of glaciers in the Himalayas with snow and ice coming down.\"\n\nThe wife recalls that, when they moved in recently, the designer showed up at the door with armfuls of mustard grown in his own garden. \"He's constantly at it,\" she marvels. \"He's constantly thinking how to make this more that.\"\n\nHe knows he is a bit of a renegade and likes it that way. At the entrance to the long drive up the hill, for instance, Mann created a massive gate strung with five stainless-steel cables. \"That gate caused a big stir,\" he explains with a touch of nostalgia. \"That proves to me that you're finally getting somewhere.\""^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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