The Robert Trickey House: A Week on a Lava Flow in Puna

Puna, Hawai'i Island, Hawaii

We stayed in a few places on the Big Island that February. This was the one. Robert Trickey found us on Airbnb and offered a trade: a few nights in his house, and in return I would photograph it properly. It turned out to be Craig Steely's first built work, a glass and steel box sitting on the 1955 lava flow above the ocean.

The Robert Trickey House: A Week on a Lava Flow in Puna
Concrete entry drive with bougainvillea spilling over the wall of the Trickey House
The glass living room of Lavaflow 1 seen across the black lava field
The house and pool at Lavaflow 1 with the lava flow running out behind
The Trickey House across the pool at midday
View through the house to a garden path lined with heliconia
Slippers left at the glass door of the Trickey House
Sliding glass wall of the Robert Trickey House seen through red ti leaves
Concrete pool coping running between the water and ferns growing out of lava rock
Pool water meeting a lava wall planted with ferns
Interior of Lavaflow 1 with the cantilevered stair and the glass wall beyond
Cantilevered mango wood stair floating above a long credenza
The cantilevered mango stair seen from below
Orange sofa and curtains in the living room, glass opening to the lava field
Sitting room with armchairs and a bench, glass opening to palms
A guest in the glass living room looking out across the lava field
Kitchen and dining area with glass walls on both sides
Bedroom with a yellow accent wall, framed art and matching bedside lamps
Blue bedroom with floor to ceiling glass opening onto a balcony
Sculptural woven chair at the foot of the bed against a blue wall
Bathroom vanity with a stone counter and a bench
Blue tiled outdoor shower wall open to the garden
Bromeliads planted directly into black lava cinder
The two storey glass elevation of the house above the pool and palms
The lit glass house reflected in the black pool at dusk
The lit house reflected upside down in the black pool at blue hour
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We stayed in a few different places on the Big Island in February 2016. This is the one Jasmine and I still talk about.

Robert Trickey, the owner, had found us through Airbnb and proposed a trade. A reduced rate on the stay, and in return I would photograph the house properly. We agreed by email on the first of the month, drove over from the Kona side that afternoon, and I was shooting by that evening.

A short edit of these frames went up on Dwell at the time. This is the fuller set, and the story that goes with it.

A spaceship that landed on the lava

The house is known as Lavaflow 1, and it is the first built work of architect Craig Steely, who went on to put a whole run of houses on this island. Robert built it himself with contractor David Beardsley and finished in 2000. Ke Ola Magazine quotes him on what he was after: "a spaceship that landed on the lava."

That is exactly how it reads on approach. A long low box of glass and steel set down on black rock, bougainvillea spilling over the entry wall, and nothing soft about the geometry anywhere. More than eighty percent of the materials came off the island. The steel came out of Hilo. The mango for the stair came from a woodworker who was closing up shop.

Across a bridge, over the pool

You come in off a cut lava terrace, across a bridge that spans the pool, and land on a lanai forty feet square. A glass enclosed living room sits at the south end of it with an uninterrupted view over the lava flow. Off the lanai are a sitting room, the kitchen, the dining room and a guest room. The mango stair floats off a white wall in cantilevered slabs and carries you up to the master bedroom, bath and study.

The pool does a lot of the work in photographs. It sits black and still exactly where the house wants to be reflected, so anything shot from the far side gives you the building twice.

Shooting it

I worked it across several days rather than one session, almost entirely in available light. Mornings went to the interiors, when the glass walls turn the whole main floor into one soft box. Evenings went to the exterior. My favorite frame of the trip came on the second night, when the lanai lights came up against a sky that had not gone dark yet and the entire house landed in the water.

Robert had asked for lifestyle frames as well as architecture, so the set moves between the two: coffee and books on the lanai table in the morning, someone sitting on the pool edge in the afternoon, the building alone at dusk. A few hundred frames went back to him when we got home.

Where it sits

The house is in Puna, the district on the southeast flank of Kilauea, out near Kehena and Kalapana. The ground under it is the 1955 lava flow. On a clear night you can sit on the lanai and watch the red glow of the crater on the underside of the clouds.

Puna is green, wet and mostly unmanicured, and the lot is planted hard with palms, heliconia and ti. The effect is a small pocket of cultivated green with raw black rock running out from the edges of it in every direction.

Worth knowing

  • The house is Lavaflow 1 by Craig Steely Architecture, with Bablowsky & Wlasenko Architects, completed in 2000.
  • It was Craig Steely's first built project. He has since built a series of houses across Hawai'i Island and the Bay Area.
  • Robert Trickey built it himself with contractor David Beardsley and sourced more than eighty percent of the materials locally.
  • It stands on the 1955 lava flow in Puna, near Kehena on the southeast side of Hawai'i Island.
  • The entry crosses a bridge over the pool onto a lanai forty feet square.
  • The stair is cantilevered mango wood, milled from a local supply.
  • There is a separate studio on the property as well as the main house.
  • On a clear night the lanai looks out at the red glow of Kilauea reflected on the clouds.
  • It is a long drive from the Kona side, so it works best as its own leg of a Big Island trip rather than a night squeezed in between others.
  • These frames are from February 2016. Ownership and rental arrangements have moved on since then, so check the current situation before planning a trip around it.

I shoot architecture, hospitality and travel photography on location. Get in touch to talk about a project.

Photography by Blake Wisz at the Robert Trickey House, Puna, Hawai'i Island, February 2016. A shorter edit of this set was published on Dwell. See more travel photography.

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I’m Blake Wisz, a photographer and creative based in Palm Coast, Florida. I create food, hospitality, travel and brand photography across Northeast Florida and on location.

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