“It’s hard to describe objectively,” says Valerie Ossipoff, Vladimir’s daughter, of her time there, “because it was a feeling place. You just came and you were quiet. It was never noisy, ever.”
Ossipoff built the first cabin in the early 1950s as a weekend retreat for his family, and a second, smaller one about five years later for close friends. They are among the few projects still standing that he designed and built for himself. The cabins were "his test bed, his sketchpad," says architect Graham Hart. Compact and minimalist, their layout parallels the prevailing trade winds. The details-rough-hewn strawberry guava and eucalyptus wood posts, screened sliding walls, narrow strips of window at eye level-illustrate some of Ossipoff's signature design principles: the integration of inside with outside, the contrasting shadows and light, the organic relationship to the site. The understated cabins seem only to lead the eye to the expansiveness beyond. "It's hard to describe objectively," says Valerie Ossipoff, Vladimir's daughter, of her time there, "because it was a feeling place. You just came and you were quiet. It was never noisy, ever."
After Ossipoff relinquished his lease and left the cabins in the 1970s, they fell into disrepair. Then in 2009 the Gill family acquired nearly 1,600 acres at Palehua from the Campbell Estate, with the goal of cultural and environmental conservation; about five years ago they began restoring the cabins based on archival photos from the '60s, enlisting craftspeople to sand down the cabins' unfinished wood and create a facsimile of the original, from the hand-cut lampshades to the Mid-Century Modern furniture. The family is making the cabins available to those who invest time doing conservation work in the Waianae mountains. Gary Gill hopes that when people step into the cabins, they will come to appreciate what Ossipoff understood: how unique Hawaii's environment is, he says, "how precious and how it needs our time and attention to protect it."
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