In the language of geology, a tuff cone is a wide, low-rimmed accumulation of debris around a volcanic vent. The debris, or tuff (from tofus, a Latin word meaning soft, light, porous rock), is igneous rock that forms wherever airborne volcanic pumice falls back to earth, piling up like a sooty snowdrift. The cliffs around Portlock, a residential community on the slope of Koko Head, the lodestone of O‘ahu’s craggy southeastern coast, are made of tuff from the same eruption that formed the crater now known as Hanauma Bay. In the pellucid waters of the bay, a protected marine life conservation area, moray eels slink around Pocillopora coral formations.   

When a ring of ancient volcanic ejecta becomes, thousands of years later, a sanctuary of new life, it’s one of the most spectacular ways nature recycles itself. And now that humans are learning to participate in nature’s recycling processes, how fitting that a home in Portlock was recently rebuilt using a host of green building materials and energy-efficient technologies.  
 
In this case, the reconstruction was long overdue, says Jim Byxbee. The founder and co-owner of Homeworks Construction, an O‘ahu-based contracting firm, Byxbee came across the house a little over a year ago on a quiet street about a quarter-mile from the shore. It was on the market, but despite the location and the property’s panoramic vistas, “nobody was buying it,” says Byxbee. Quite simply, the problem was the house. Built in the 1970s, it had slowly become a white elephant, a two-story crazy quilt of expansions and redos, a ‘pu’u (pimple) on the pretty hillside. “It was awful,” says Byxbee. Its predominant style? “Ugly style.”
 
Byxbee, whose company has helped spearhead the incorporation of green building materials and methods in Hawaiian construction in recent years, saw an opportunity. The idyllic location begged for an eco-friendly, energy-efficient—and beautiful—home. Homeworks bought the house with the idea of doing a top-to-bottom renovation, but plans quickly evolved. “When we got in there, it was pretty termite-damaged,” Byxbee says. “We ended up rebuilding all the walls in the house.”  

It was just as well. Pondering a new floor plan, Byxbee wanted one that framed the view and seized the breeze. He placed a guest suite on the first floor, with the rest of the 3,800-square-foot residence upstairs—and lots of verticality in between. As a result, the four-bedroom, three-and-a-half-bath residence now boasts elegant strata of step-ups and step-downs. Off the kitchen, three travertine steps lead up to a cozy nook with two white side chairs and ottomans. Nearby, two steps flow down into a sunken lounge. “We could have just done it all on one level, but to me that’s a little boring,” Byxbee says.

In the sloping back yard, Byxbee also had his crew hack through the stubborn coral to install a bone-shaped pool. Twin waterfalls flow into it from a limestone retaining wall flanked by fire pits. In fact, the only part of the former house left intact—sort of—was the concrete driveway, on whose weather-beaten surface Homeworks laid down a faux finish. “We cut lines in it and chipped away to make it older-looking,” Byxbee says. “Then we stained the concrete two different colors—a brown and a lighter brown. It looks like an ancient Roman road.”

Byxbee envisions the property, now listed for $2 million, as a retirement home or second residence. For the interior colors and finishes, he opted for a creamy, crowd-pleasing palette of light tan and other pale earth tones offset by rich cherry and mahogany trim and cabinetry. Travertine lines the floor of the kitchen and master bath. The furniture, with its vivid textures like wicker and suede, blends traditional Indonesian motifs with sleek modern sensibilities. Wide-blade ceiling fans waft a plantation breeze through the sky-lit spaces, and pocketing doors open onto the second-floor länai.
 
A native of Connecticut, Byxbee moved to Hawai‘i in 1991. “I worked for another contractor and I saw that there were no real custom builders in O‘ahu,” he says. “You had five floor plans and four color schemes, and that was it.” To fill the niche, he founded Homeworks in 1994. The firm started with a staff of two and now numbers more than 60. Homeworks does some commercial projects also, and Byxbee credits the company’s success to its flexibility. “We understand our role,” Byxbee says. “We’ll build whatever makes sense.”
 
The most sensible aspects of the Portlock home are the green products that pervade the entire property. The board-and-batten siding and the wood shake roof are made from oriented strand board, an engineered wood product that utilizes entire logs—“every little chip,” Byxbee says—and the roof is lined with TechShield, a radiant barrier that helps cool the interior. Inside, the hardwood floors are cut from merbau, another engineered wood product, which is harvested from the mangroves of Southeast Asia, not from the imperiled rainforests of South America.  
 
The home is designed to have the most slender carbon footprint possible. The tankless heater supplies the home with unlimited hot water on demand while consuming less energy than a traditional tank. Low-emissivity double-glass windows aid climate control. The central air conditioning system can be programmed to chill only a key room or two—the master suite, for example—whenever whole-house cooling isn’t necessary. The kitchen is stocked with Energy Star-rated appliances. And, to conserve what little rainfall the area receives, Byxbee channeled the home’s roof gutters to irrigate the landscaping, where low-maintenance species such as Manilla palms create privacy on every side of the property.
 
Other Hawaiian contractors have followed the trail Homeworks has blazed into eco-friendly construction, Byxbee says. “They’re copying what we’re doing. They’re copying our seminars, our materials, our designs, our ads.”  

Homeworks’ next act will be tough to imitate. The firm’s new pet project is the rebuilding of the Makakilo Baptist Church in Kapolei. The company is teaming up with Reuse Hawai‘i, a firm that will take the existing structure apart piece by piece and reuse, recycle, or resell the material. Is recycling the Earth a sure way into heaven? Byxbee hopes so. “That probably looks good on your resume when you get up to the Pearly Gates.” Meanwhile, it looks good here in the Islands as well.