A Secret Garden

This once commercial unit in the heart of the Mission District of San Francisco was converted into a uniquely grounded single-family home. Historically, this century old 2-story wood frame building built in the 1890’s was part of a dispersed 26th Street merchant corridor, which over time has gradually migrated to nearby Mission and Valencia Streets, as housing pressures in the city have steadily increased.  The shop front has been updated to a compressed front yard, while the rear “yard” is transformed into a completive garden – enclosed as is a typical condition in the dense Mission District, transformed here into a quiet, private and nature-animated oasis which the new home relies on for air, light, color and texture.

Space dissolves into a bamboo grove

This new ground floor unit connects the busy street front through an ordered façade of 100% reclaimed glass arranged like scales in a steel matrix, to the quite rear grove of timber bamboo, ferns and Japanese maple.  The architectural space moves through an open glass wall into dappled shade and the sound of wind rustles the 40ft lush canopy. A customized fence unifies the edges with a color palette derived from the life cycle of the timber bamboo trunks.

A river of cork runs through it

The interior plan is inverted – to provide bedroom and a private office off the garden while the core of the home is an open plan of living and dining around an open kitchen.  The living space is organized by a continuous long and high surface of cork meant to create a soft acoustic environment and flexible display throughout the home, while also concealing the volumes for mechanical, storage and bathrooms.  The floor to ceiling expanses of cork surface eventually envelope an entire sensual enclosure at the master bedroom, where the cork surround one on walls, doors and ceilings.

Space and Light in balance with Nature

The interior space maximizes the limited 1,200 sf. floor plan by way of integrating storage within the sculpted cabinets and built-in seating volumes.  The storage perforates and frames the unencumbered space, along with the use of glass walls and sliding partitions to allow for functionally distinct areas to work in concert with one another – providing openness, privacy and separation as needed, and allowing natural light to reach deep into the narrow home.

Grass Roots Urbanism

The culmination of many community-focused design workshops, and stakeholder input, that created the California Cable Car Turn-Around Vision Plan ignited the formation of a separate group committed to seeing this area become the gateway to the Polk Street mercantile corridor.  The idea of creating a more formalized pedestrian focused transit node, away from the busy Van Nes corridor, here at the Polk intersection was the starting point for the Polk Plaza Vision

A New Cable Car Social Hub

Working with the growing group of “friends” of Polk-Plaza,  INTERSTICE was asked to create an addendum to the original vision plan that focused on the Polk intersection cable car stop,  with its obvious connections to the community, and to the heritage of San Francisco’s iconic cable car past.  The intersection is envisioned to serve as the gateway to the city’s western center – With widened sidewalks, bulbed curbs, street amenities and plantings at the four corners, the intersection at California street forms a larger hub connecting the bike lanes, and personal mobility routes to this very walkable neighborhood, with its heritage merchants, eateries and lively bars, that characterize this thriving Polk Gulch neighborhood.

From this new activated area, visitors and locals are just steps away from Nob Hill, Russian Hill, Cathedral Hill, Civic Center and the Tenderloin neighborhoods – so, it seemed the natural place to envision a lively orientation point at the western most terminus of the Cable car system.

Focusing Community

Here Street musicians would serenade the waiting commuters, the passing shoppers,  and the tourists on their elevated journey over the hills – to and from the Embarcadero and Chinatown. The plan imagines a redesigned civic space that makes people welcome and provides opportunity for interpretive signage, wayfinding , and musical programming from the nearby Music City Studios and hotel. The entire Vision plan can be found here – with the Polk Plaza addendum published here as a standalone document.

Join the friends of Polk Plaza and the Polk Corridor Neighbors as we continue to work on the best public commons for our San Francisco neighborhood.  

Expanding Into the Outdoors

A home in the Pacific Heights neighborhood of San Francisco expands to create a garden connector, allowing a realigned kitchen to become the conduit between the original formal dining room and a new informal family room that opens out onto a transformed garden—extending the home outdoors.

Home and Garden

This elegant, historic Dutch-style home in San Francisco was in need of a better connection to its garden, an under-used and difficult-to-negotiate rear yard. INTERSTICE Architects knew the solution was both architectural and landscape-focused.  It was a question of reconfiguration of both the kitchen and its awkward relationship to the steeply sloped site, which had limited the gardens usability for decades. The home was expanded and dug out to create new space at the lower level, while allowing the yard to establish a continuous relationship to the main living floor. The interiors were realigned to establish the kitchen as a connecting social space between the new informal, private family room, while the exterior garden was remade to be a clearly articulated extension of the social and entertainment level of the home.

Shaping the “Smart-Wall”

A full height cabinet “smart-wall” inside the residence epitomizes the key aspect of this project: the integration of spaces. This smart-wall establishes a material transition between the kitchen—where it acts as a storage and shelving wall—into the family room. From this living space, the design transforms, containing a new hearth, skylight, and entertainment center, before moving all the way through to the garden patio window wall—where it thickens to conceal a secret, private full bathroom.

Framed by Wood

Outside, the landscape is restructured from three unusable levels into a spacious two-level terraced garden. The living level provides a patio deck beyond the dynamic glass wall of the family room for exterior dining. An in-wall fountain anchors one end, along with a wood clad raised sun garden and a cozy fireplace, all framed by the warmth of wood and dark, smooth concrete.  Together these materials form a seat back that wraps the retaining walls and connects the more remote and private upper garden level. The upper garden is set on a wood clad deck with a sunken hot tub, an outdoor shower, and a hammock, all sheltered by deep plantings and mature tree ferns.

Natural as the Counterpoint

The predominance of natural exposed materials permeates the garden and the interior palette, allowing for a more sensual counterpoint from the rest of the formal and more traditional home.  Warm materials and discreet lighting create an inviting and pleasant night presence, while communicating an easy comfort as the home dissolves from interior to outdoors across the expansive glass facade. Festoon lights above and a spiral stair to the upstairs extended green garden roof improve the second level private studio.

Bringing Light Down

INTERSTICE designed the kitchen and light-well as a light-emitting garden column planted with tree bamboo. This space was particularly meant to bring light down into the new, lower media and guest room, excavated to host service spaces including an independent laundry room and full bath that allows for connection or full separation from the home office level below, and for the owners to enjoy increased privacy.

A Central Oasis

The busy intersection of California and Polk Streets is the north gate of the Polk Alleyways District, which punctuates the westernmost cable car stop in San Francisco. The landscape designed by INTERSTICE Architects complements this new, thoughtfully conceived building by David Baker.  A multifamily unit residence creates our neighborhood canvas for a spacious new corner streetscape, while providing a new festoon lit alleyway access off of Polk Street that leads into a semi-private courtyard: an oasis at the center of the project.

Unfolding Organization

The courtyard is a pinwheel of programs designed around a central, nest-like intimate seating element.  Around this custom wood enclosure, which undulates and unfolds under a grove of deciduous trees, are organized an exterior living room space, a restaurant view-scape, a yoga studio deck, and a mini dog-run for the building’s pets. The court connects the two entry levels on this sloped site from California and Polk Streets along a second planted exterior pathway. This path ascends from the inner court though an open air atrium up a planted stairwell to reach the California Street lobby paseo. 

Green Meanders

Along the wire structures, vines climb to provide privacy and vertical green walls throughout the enfilade spaces. Alongside this green space, cut logs become pavers that lead the eye into the lushly planted areas meant to allow a more intimate, slow access to the courtyard complex, whether enjoying a brief pause in the space or meandering along the pathways. The grove’s shaded nest is both a furnishing and social concentrator: residents can choose to perch solitarily, or join in small groups. This quiet open space is perfect for imaginative play by the younger members of the extended housing community.  

Garden Respite

This densely populated area of San Francisco is in desperate need of more green spaces. The 1567 California Street project offers a lushly intimate, park-like court that is a welcome respite from the bustling mercantile corridor just beyond the new housing project. Like a miniature Tivoli Gardens, it provides material richness and after-hours lighting to allow for an extended use into even the darkest seasons for its diverse community to enjoy throughout the year.