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.

Reorienting a Home to Its Lake

Transforming a two-story summer home on a steeply sloped site over Candlewood Lake in New Milford, Connecticut, into a year-round primary residence meant expanding the home, while opening it up to capture more light and intensify its relationship with the seasonal spectacle of the lakefront. The resulting home merges dramatic interior living space with the landscape using local, authentic materials and carefully choreographed transparency to connect the lived experience of the house with the place that inspires and defines it.

Lake Life

The existing home, built in the mid-20th century, was a modest self-contained gable structure, passively neutral to its spectacular surroundings and its privileged site. INTERSTICE Architects began from the premise that the home needed to be more than a house beside a lake—it needed to be a true expression of lakeside dwelling: it had to respond to its place in celebration of the rituals and daily experiences of New England lake life. Calling for an architecture that is in stronger dialogue with the exterior, the house needed to be more porous, yet protective, providing sweeping views both horizontally and vertically of its surroundings. From the upper canopy of the surrounding trees, down to the shoreline and the shimmering water below, the reimagined home engages the changing light, movement, and color of its setting.

Exploring Ma

The layering and interweaving of space-time and becoming is best summed up in the Japanese spatial and temporal concept of ma. Guiding our design approach for the lake house spatial experience, this concept is demonstrated in the enfolding of interior space with the exterior world. The entry is where interior and exterior fuse and blur. This pivotal experience of the house orients the interior space and is a point of juxtaposition. A glass entry vestibule fans out from the main volume of the house, allowing the slope-side garden paving stones to flow seamlessly inwards at a slightly lower level than the main living spaces of the house. This gives the arrival experience a moment of pause and repose, between interior and exterior, before one steps up onto the warm hardwood floors of the home. Just within is the open stairway which occupies the transparent center of the home, an in-between space, that interconnects all three levels of the house, from office and studio lofts above, to the lower garden patio level facing the lake. The bright and social stairway allows light to penetrate deep into the structure.

Lake and Sky

To “wake up and see only the lake and sky,” to always have a place to put everything away, and to experience the great reveal of the lake through the house, upon entry and “in every room,” were client aspirations expressed in the design brief. Walls that previously prevented the free flow of movement were removed, expanding spaces and merging volumes. New volumes are added to store vehicles, provide office space, and additional bedrooms, in a constant effort to reframe the lake and views to the forest landscape and garden. Roofs are lifted upwards in response to the slope, and the house is reconfigured so that volumes cascade down towards the shoreline. The main circulation is organized to be transparent to the landscape, allowing interior spaces to interact and connect along a central three-story space bathed in natural light.

An Oasis Within

The master suite is designed to be an enclosed oasis within the house, a private sanctuary from guests at the heart of the home with ample closets, a private study, and a spacious bathroom. Glass and wood are used in floor to ceiling planes—a wall of glass facing southwest creates a uniquely intimate relationship with the lakefront and allows the bedroom sweeping views that descend to the lakeshore below, a year-round vista that changes seasonally.

A Slice of Sky

A continuous ribbon of skylights unfurls from the entry vestibule over to the great room, across the open kitchen to descend toward the lakefront façade, two stories down to the lower patio. The slice of light provides a dramatic interior experience of the landscape, and the sun’s rays transect across these connected spaces. The great room, combining all social functions—cooking, dining, living—is unified by the clients’ extensive indoor greenery collection displayed and fostered within the new open and naturally-lit space.

Building Into the Hillside

This new accessory dwelling is sited along a woodland path that leads from the larger main home to a favorite upland swimming spring on this 200-acre property in unincorporated Healdsburg,  located deep in the  Sonoma Valley foothills of Mount Jackson.  The efficient open plan is split-level and partially buried into the sloping site allowing the private” Bedroom Block” to be elevated from the open “Living Porch” which extends outwards into the patio garden beyond the tall glazed surfaces extending the interior space under a wide cantilevered folded roof embracing the larger landscape and abundant open space.

En-Folded towards the Light

The butterfly-roof form allows views to the sun-speckled uphill meadows and also downhill towards the high mountain ridged horizon beyond the creek,  where meadows cascade towards the road below,  over orchards and gardens that serve the home. The Metal Roofs form an open shell that descends to enclose the rear forest-facing bedroom wing of the house while opening like wings to reveal the interior soft wood soffits that extend the interior ceilings outwards into the landscape.

Exterior Connected Living 

The exterior finishes travel inside just as those within travel outwards –  and there is a breezy openness to the home that allows the family to live “outside”  within the cozy, warmly textured interior. The bench-low walls extend the indoor kitchen outwards to an exterior kitchen and second living room focused on wide wood benches and a protected fire pit that catches the last rays of the setting sun each day.

A Water’s Tale

The Solar paneled roof also collects and concentrates water towards the patio garden and herb beds that line the entry path beside the sunny orchards.  A small corten steel channel bisects the patio social space becoming a vertical water feature with every storm while channeling water to the south where the gardens surround the sitting areas, pathways, and gathering spaces.

A New Realignment

This project located in the San Francisco Marina District near the Palace of Fine Arts  has expanded from a modest renovation of the living space and kitchen to a more comprehensive revamp on two levels, creating a more integrated, modern, and functional living environment. The flow of the house is realigned to take advantage of this corner lot’s ample natural light and southern exposure. The kitchen becomes a warm social center with bleached woods, warm highlights, nooks, and cubbies for working and spending time together in this informal family-oriented space. Downstairs, the den, guest space, and storage are now clearly defined and better-organized in relation to utility areas and natural light. New glass walls and open circulation allow south light to penetrate deeply into the central areas of the home, breathing light into the renewed structure.