Tracey Taylor

Focus on local extends to home design, San Francisco Chronicle, June 20 2010

Stinson home designed by David Stark Wilson. Photo: WA Design.

Hear the words “locally sourced,” “sustainable” and “artisanal,” and you’re likely to think of the Bay Area culinary movement, which puts an emphasis on provenance and purity. But it’s not just food that’s getting the locavore imprimatur. Home design has followed suit, and some of those commissioning new homes now are as evangelical as the most ardent food purists about choosing local architects, designers, craftsmen and furniture-makers. Sustainability is almost always part of the package.

As the trend becomes more popular, provenance in designing a home is becoming as pivotal an issue as it is at a restaurant run by Alice Waters or Thomas Keller. The names of favored suppliers may not appear on menus, but their influence is evident in many new homes in San Francisco, the East Bay and the Wine Country.

Those supplier names include Sausalito’s Heath Ceramics for its tile, Oakland fabricator Concreteworks for its tubs and sinks, Berkeley Mills for hand-crafted cabinets and dining tables, organic bath and bed linens from Coyuchi in Point Reyes Station, Oakland’s Sullivan for custom Corian countertops, recycled glass surfaces from Vetrazzo in Richmond, reclaimed wood from Arborica in Petaluma, and staircases and steel oven hoods from Chris French Metal in Oakland.

Local architects are leading the effort, bringing their preferred suppliers into the fold. Michael McDonald, an Oakland designer-builder, and the force behind two locavore homes, says if the focus on local sources has become a movement, it didn’t happen on purpose but emerged instinctively.

“It’s a natural extension of the farm-to-table idea,” he says. “We like to build thoughtful homes where all those involved collaborate closely.”

Backlash against Web

Perhaps part of this is a backlash against a Web-based infrastructure that makes it easy to order materials and furniture from anywhere in the world. The experience may be convenient, but it’s impersonal and prevents working closely with a local fabricator who can spend time in a home and craft an item that is tailored to a person’s needs.

Sugar Bowl home by John Maniscalco Architecture.

McDonald, whose own home in Oakland, known as the Margarido House, was the first residential project in the country to be both LEED-H certified and GreenPoint rated, believes much of it has to do with “a hunger for human interaction beyond the cocktail party.”

“We spend so much time in an online cocoon, there’s a will to break out and work face-to-face with people again,” he says. “Perhaps because many of us are transplants to the West Coast, there’s an element of re-creating the family we left behind.”

McDonald’s most recent project, a four-story home in Mill Valley that was featured on the recent American Institute of Architects’ Marin Home Tour, was created by a bevy of local talent, including St. Helena designer Erin Martin and the home’s owner, architect Scott Lee. Martin’s signature use of salvaged materials such as scaffolding wood, steel and rope is complemented by huge hunks of reclaimed timber sourced from Evan Shively’s wood mill, Arborica - used in one case for a dramatic porch swing - as well as custom concrete counters and tubs from Concreteworks.

Mark Rogero, founder of Concreteworks, says there is a uniquely Bay Area flavor to the movement. “The Bay Area is like a village where people know and respect one another and the work they do. In the design and construction community, there’s a shared commitment to one another’s respective trades, which in turn makes for a better built environment. It would be a challenge to find this aspect in larger metropolitan areas like New York.”

San Francisco architect Cass Calder Smith recently completed a modernist family home in Palo Alto that is a model of locavore design. Built on a lot whose previous home was painstakingly taken down over a five-week period to minimize waste, the new home has rammed-earth walls, created with dirt excavated from the site, fixtures and fittings that were all designed at the site or nearby, and a drought-tolerant meadow-like landscape with plants found at area nurseries.

You have to be there

For East Bay architect David Stark Wilson, any high-end, intricate design requires a build-local approach by definition. “Craftsmen need to be on site. In the case of a light fixture or appliance, you can order it in and anyone can do the installation, but this isn’t the case with most custom design. If you are trying to create a unique design to respond to a client, you need to have talented local craftspeople available as a resource.”

The economy plays its part too. For those building a home in the aftermath of the recession’s financial bloodbath, longevity can be key - it’s better to invest in a home where one intends to stick around for a while, even a lifetime. In that case, the highest-quality materials, craftsmanship and customization can be justified.

Mill Valley home built by McDonald Construction & Development. Photo: Mariko Reed

San Francisco architect John Maniscalco advises against thinking of locavore homes as a religion, however. “Like many ‘green’ building ideas, there are logical limits to how far you can take it,” he says. “Some materials allow for local sourcing and fabrication, but others, like lumber, are simply not sensible or cost-effective to source in a completely local way. With any green building component, we balance the benefits of local sourcing and production against the advantages that manufactured products like engineered lumber provide.”

Maniscalco says his firm’s projects are typically built by a small network of craftsmen it has worked with over the years. “That collaboration brings great value to the design process.” And he cites a recently completed home in Sugar Bowl that was a locavore project “in part by desire, and in part by necessity.” After all, a house that is snowbound for seven months of the construction period forces many things to be made on the site.

“Our Tahoe-based contractor was tied into a network of long-established local craftsmen and material resources which we benefited from on many levels,” he says. “The quality of the finished elements, like the main stairway, is as much a product of our detailed steel design as the character of the timber treads hand-selected by the contractor.”

‘Buy local’

Margie O’Driscoll, executive director of the San Francisco chapter of the American Institute of Architects, believes that if the process of designing homes is becoming increasingly concentrated within a smaller geographic area, it may be because there’s more of a desire to support one’s community. Just as the “buy local” business campaigns have gathered steam, those who are building a new home want to work with talent that’s close to home.

O’Driscoll says the institute took that approach when it renovated its own offices four years ago, choosing Bay Area architect Alfred Quezada, who selected a team including contractors BCCI, Vallejo architectural metalworker Tony Orantes and Vetrazzo, which made countertops for the library. “We didn’t want to collaborate with someone who was eight time zones away,” says O’Driscoll.

Some homes have always been made in the locavore way: A home in Africa was made using mud and wood that lay within carrying distance. Similarly, architectural styles have traditionally reflected the stone and lumber that could be found in the vicinity. As the cost of transporting materials continues to rise, more people will look for local sources. The LEED green certification system includes points for local materials and resources. Perhaps we are just coming full circle.

Resources

Arborica, mill specializing in reclaimed and urban salvage, Petaluma; (415) 663-9126.

BCCI Builders, 185 Berry St., San Francisco; (415) 817-5100. www.bcciconst.com.

Berkeley Mills, hand-crafted furniture and cabinets, 2830 Seventh St., Berkeley; (510) 549-2854. www.berkeleymills.com.

Chris French Metal Inc., metal fabrication, 1336 16th St., Oakland; (510) 238-9339. www.cfrenchmetal.com.

Concreteworks, concrete tubs and sinks. 1137 57th Ave., Oakland; (510) 534-7141. www.concreteworks.com.

Coyuchi, organic bath and bed linens, Point Reyes Station, (888) 418-8847. www.coyuchi.com.

Erin Martin Design, 1118 Hunt Ave., St. Helena; (707) 963-4141. www.erinmartindesign.com.

Heath Ceramics, hand-crafted tiles. 400 Gate Five Road, Sausalito; (415) 332-3732 Ext. 13. www.heathceramics.com.

John Maniscalco Architecture, 442 Grove St., San Francisco; (415) 864-9900. www.m-architecture.com.

McDonald Construction and Development Inc., Oakland design-builder, (510) 550-4966. www.m-c-d.net.

Orantes Architectural Metals Inc., Building 672, Waterfront Ave., Vallejo. (707) 562-3150; www.tonyorantes.com.

Quezada Architecture, 767 Bridgeway, Sausalito; (415) 331-5133. www.thinkqa.com.

SB Architects, 1 Beach St., Suite 301, San Francisco; (415) 673-8990. www.sb-architects.com.

Sullivan Counter Tops, 1189 65th St., Oakland; (510) 652-2337. www.sullivancountertops.com.

Vetrazzo, recycled glass surfaces, Richmond; (510) 234-5550. www.vetrazzo.com.

WA Design, 805 Folger Ave., Berkeley; (510) 883-0868. www.wadesign.com.

Memories fill Mulvany home, which is primed for a renewal

San Francisco Chronicle, June 6 2010

The home's library. Photo: Scott Hargis Photography

It is not surprising that Alamedans proved very curious to see inside 2927 Gibbons Drive when, on two recent weekends, estate sales were held there to sell the contents of the Italian villa-style home.

“We estimate 1,400 people came through the house,” said listing agent Anthony Riggins, who works for East Bay Sotheby’s International. “We practically had to put a security detail on the door.”

The intense interest can be explained by the home’s historical significance on the island and that it is the first time the property has come on the market since it was built by John J. Mulvany in 1928. It cost $28,000 to build, thought to be three times the amount a typical Mediterranean-style home would have cost at the time. Today, its asking price is $1.625 million.

Several of those previewing visitors scooped up, for a price, pieces of stately dining room furniture, wrought-iron bedsteads and elegant lounging chaises. For the prospective buyers who see the house this weekend at its first open house Sunday from 2 to 4:30 p.m., what is left is a period home bursting with original features and ripe for renovation.

What will make it particularly appealing to old home enthusiasts is the wealth of detail that remains intact - from ceiling frescoes to drapery hardware, from balustrades to solid walnut doors. And history buffs will revel in the story of the family that lived there for two generations.

“We have deliberately left every detail intact so that a potential buyer can see the integrity of the house and it will help them restore it,” said John Nelson, the trustee and executor in charge of selling the house for the former owner, Marion Holt, Mulvany’s daughter and a longtime Alameda volunteer who died in the home in 2009.

John Mulvany, who came to California from Ireland when he was just 6 weeks old, was instrumental in shaping Alameda as we now know it. A man who wore many hats, he created the Fernside neighborhood as a real estate developer. As a financier, he founded the first bank in Alameda in the early 1900s. Located on Park Street and known initially as the Encinal Bank, it merged with the Bank of Italy, which eventually became the Bank of America.

Mulvany moved in high Republican circles, and his Gibbons Drive home was the scene of regular Thursday dinners with some of the most well-known names in the GOP and elsewhere. Guests included Adm. Chester Nimitz and his wife; Chief Justice and former Gov. Earl Warren, who lived in Oakland’s Crocker Highlands neighborhood; Richard Nixon, who served as a California senator and congressman before he was president; as well as Ronald Reagan, who also served as governor, and his first wife, actress Jane Wyman.

The lone famous Democrat who, legend has it, also dined in the home was President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who came to the ribbon-cutting ceremony for the opening of the Naval Station. Roosevelt was whisked through one of the home’s side entrances to avoid being spotted in his wheelchair, the legend says.

The home's living room. Photo: Scott Hargis Photography.

Mulvany died in the home’s cozy mahogany-paneled library in September 1964, as did his daughter, Holt, 45 years later, at her request. The library features the original concealed Prohibition-era cupboard, which still holds the scent of illicit liquor; there is also a secret panel in the room behind which Holt hid the family’s silver service.

Other features of note include the copper picture panels set into the living room’s coffered ceiling. This grand room has an expansive curved bay window that looks out over the property’s lawn on the front of the home’s triangular lot. The living room’s large fireplace was barely, if ever, used and is therefore in pristine condition. Nelson, who was a good friend of Holt’s, says this room was used only occasionally for formal entertaining, while the fireplace in the library was lit much more frequently.

All the home’s light fixtures, including an imposing chandelier in the main stairwell, as well as curtain rods, even the original velvet drapes, are still in good condition. An inner courtyard features a tiled fountain made by the Californian pottery firm Gladding, McBean LLC, which also manufactured the home’s terra-cotta roof tiles. A galleried balcony wraps around the second floor and overlooks the patio garden like something from a Shakespearean theater production.

The home has one more surprise in store in the basement: a huge space that encompasses what used to be the family’s party room, which boasted a floating hardwood floor, a stage and fireplace. The floor was removed several years ago to install a French drain, but the fireplace remains.

“The family would hold dance parties and talent shows using the stage in the lower-level reception room,” Nelson said. “There’s a photo showing them all dressed up in luau costumes. This space would make a wonderful media room today.”

After nearly a century of housing the same family, its walls are ready for someone else’s touch.

“This is an amazing house just waiting for the right owner to bring it sensitively back to life,” Nelson said.

New York Times, June 17 2010

Photo: Joe Fletcher.

“It sounds very Californian, but this home found us,” said Kim Todd, explaining why she and her husband, Andrew, left a 5,000-square-foot house with a pool and a large landscaped garden in Marin County for a home one-fifth the size, with a single bedroom and a wealth of deferred maintenance.

The couple, who run diPietro Todd, a chain of hair salons in the San Francisco Bay Area, first saw the crescent-shaped house nestled in a canyon of redwood trees here about four years ago, and almost immediately made the decision to move.

“We fell in love as soon as we saw the house and its surroundings,” Ms. Todd, 55, said. “Our work life is so public. It’s really quiet here, and the owls fly by at night.”

She and Mr. Todd, 49, had two children who were nearly grown — Luke is now 17, and Sophie is 21 — and they knew they were approaching the time when they would have to think about downsizing, since they were “soon going to be empty nesters,” she said.

But the architecture was a big part of the appeal. The house was built in 1958 by Daniel J. Liebermann, an architect who had apprenticed with Frank Lloyd Wright, and he was just 28 when he designed it for himself and his wife. Like most of Mr. Liebermann’s homes, it is constructed on a radial frame, with curving exterior walls.

Photo: Dean Kelly for NYT.

John Lovell, a friend of Mr. Todd’s who is a designer and had studied Mr. Liebermann’s work, showed him the listing when the house came on the market and urged him to take a look. Mr. Todd then passed the listing along to another friend, Wanda Liebermann, an architect who had helped design several of his salons, without realizing she was Mr. Liebermann’s daughter. “That’s the house I grew up in,” she told him.

Mr. Liebermann had sold the house in 1966, but he was living nearby — and still practicing architecture at 80 — and both he and Ms. Liebermann advised the Todds during the early stages of the renovation, although the lion’s share of the remodel was overseen by designer Vivian Dwyer.

But Mr. Todd also spent many hours alone on the property, ruminating about how to proceed. “I would stare at every angle and reconfigure the space in my mind,” he said of the house, which they bought in 2006 for $1,125,000. “In the end, it was clear the original design was best. We chose to edit and make the home more luxurious.”

That meant leaving the interior layout basically as it was, with one important exception: the three cramped bedrooms and two bathrooms in the sleeping area were replaced with a single master bedroom and bathroom, and a walk-in closet handcrafted in wood by a boat builder. (The couple’s son sleeps in an adjacent guest house; their daughter had already left home by the time they moved in a year ago.)

It also meant upgrading the house’s 19 skylights, putting in a new kitchen and refurbishing the radiant heating system. New lighting was installed throughout the house; the wood rafters and the ceiling were wire-brushed and waxed; the concrete floors were restained and polished; and the exposed brick walls were coated with plaster to create a more modern look.

Not surprisingly, the remodeling budget spiraled. “We started with the idea of spending $350 a square foot,” Mr. Todd said. “We ended up spending at least 25 percent more than that — at some point I stopped counting. I just knew we had only one chance to do it right.”

Living in a 1,100-square-foot house has had its challenges. The couple had to get rid of many of their possessions, including most of Mr. Todd’s collection of midcentury modern furniture. “I had to put so much in storage,” he said. “I brought my Mies van der Rohe daybed here, and it was too big, too square.”

Ms. Todd, however, is content to be a minimalist. “This home represents the next chapter for us as a couple,” she said. “It’s our rite of passage.”

Radius house: photo by Joe Fletcher.

San Francisco Chronicle, May 5 2010

If there’s one thing the houses featured on the American Institute of Architects’ Marin Home Tour teach us, it’s how to work with, not against, nature when crafting dwellings. Each of the five homes on the May 15 tour embraces the landscape in which it is sited to such an extent that the boundaries between structure and nature are often pleasantly obscure. Whether it’s the Sausalito home that gives itself completely to the panoramic sweep of the bay, the crescent-shaped home in Mill Valley designed 50 years ago to follow precisely the contours of a forest ridge, or the newly built house, also in Mill Valley, that tucks itself into a steep hillside and then uses the resulting verticality to stunning effect: All have grabbed the gorgeous Marin scenery and run with it.

Radius House

Dwyer Design (renovation), Daniel Liebermann (original architect and apprentice of Frank Lloyd Wright)

This home of the earth defines the concept of building in harmony with nature. Designed in the early 1960s by Daniel Liebermann, who apprenticed with Frank Lloyd Wright at Taliesin West, the Radius House is just 1,000 square feet, and its unusual crescent shape was chosen to follow, and nestle snugly into, the contours of the forest’s ridge.

The home gives itself completely to the beautiful giant redwoods that surround it; the ample use of wood and stone inside bring it even closer to the land.

The owners asked contractor Kevin Smith and designer Vivian Dwyer to bring the home up to contemporary standards without in any way deviating from the original vision. The roof was rebuilt to allow for adequate ventilation and for a proper electrical system. A new kitchen was installed and the concrete floors, wood beams and signature metal pipes were all refurbished. The curved exposed brick walls were covered with smooth, white plaster. Idiosyncratic original elements such as the airplane glass shelves that cut into the exterior walls, drawing in light on overcast days, were also restored.

Finally, a new lighting system creates magical effects at night to complement the compelling way the sunlight moves through the house during the day.

The Hillside Residence

Scott Lee, AIA, president SB Architects in collaboration with Arcanum Architecture

Probably the most astonishing thing about this beautiful new home built into a steep hill above Mill Valley is the fact that it is just 2,100 square feet. Although the house is built on the vertical with limited space, it seems extremely large.

The trick is that the architect and his team of collaborators have not only made ingenious use of every nook and cranny, but they have also designed a genuinely indoor-outdoor dwelling. Every level features balconies, covered terraces and decks so that, whether you want to read, play, take a nap or even soak in a tub, you can do so in comfort outside or indoors.

The home, which uses myriad reclaimed materials in its interior design - including scaffolding wood, steel and rope - has 50 solar roof panels and under-floor radiant heating and is on track to be the first house in Marin County certified in the LEED for Homes program.

Portnoy Danzig Residence. Photo: Jim Bastardo

Sharon Portnoy Design

When designing her own home, architect Sharon Portnoy wanted to maximize the site’s views of Mount Tamalpais and retain privacy from the street-facing side of the property. Her solution was to create an L-shaped house whose main level is modeled on the “piano nobile” concept of one large living area. Walls of glass give onto a private, level lawn that, along with the outside dining space, functions as an anteroom to the vista.

The home is sensibly organized with a laundry, office and garage supporting the main living functions of the house, while the bedrooms make up a partial third story, perched on the upper level of the long arm of the “L.”

Portnoy, who cites among her influences Nova Scotia architect Brian MacKay-Lyons and Shim-Sutcliffe Architects, also Canadian, focused on dealing with the simple volumes in a way that would make the best use of light and create balanced proportions and scale.

Sausalito Residence

450 Architects

One of the first aspects visitors will notice about this beautiful Sausalito home is the absence of a garage. The home’s facade certainly benefits - tucked into its lot with terraced steps leading to the front door, it’s a contemporary home that functions like the traditional ones that surround it, with integrated privacy and a modest bearing.

Step into the great room and the panoramic views of Richardson Bay take center stage, with floor-to-ceiling doors and windows facing the water creating a light-filled, airy interior.

Working with Quantum Builders, the architects more than met the owner’s desire for an eco-friendly, meditative home. The home’s design uses a passive solar system and boasts California’s first rainwater-harvesting system approved for residential use. The owner also enjoys being able to control the home’s heating and lighting on his iPhone, even when on a different continent, thanks to a state-of-the-art home automation system.

Lovell House

Quezada Architecture

The neighbors in Mill Valley were surprised when, in 1995, architects Cecilia and Alfred Quezada bought the home the locals referred to as “the tear-down,” and they were even more taken aback to hear that the Quezadas loved what they saw: a small - about 1,100 square feet - funky 1950s cabin with redwood siding, steel windows, and in poor shape. But the Quezadas’ vision, one they pursued until last year when they sold the home to move on to their next labor of love, was founded on retaining the spirit of the original house, which had been owned by a respected geologist.

The architects embarked on a remodel in three phases: after making the house habitable and putting in new windows to drink in the gorgeous canyon views, the majority of the house was rebuilt in 1998 with an addition of a separate studio. This is reached from the house’s entry terrace, a breezeway topped with a white-glass canopy. The studio is designed to echo the architecture of the home, with identical redwood siding, steel windows and a gently sloping zinc-aluminum roof. It offers a full bathroom and sleeping loft, as well as open live-work space.

The home’s lower sleeping level includes a foyer with large glass pivot doors leading to a terrace, an elegant way to separate the master suite from the rest of the house.

The final work, in 2006, was creating a combined kitchen and den, which are housed under a ceiling of translucent panels. Combined with a bay window with a sitting shelf overlooking the canyon, this allows for maximum light.

 

Photo: Cutter Capshaw Photography

New York Times, April 7 2010

Michelle Kaufmann, an architect, remembers leading Laura Bush, the first lady, on a personal tour of one of her prefabricated homes, pointing out its on-demand water heater and explaining how the graywater system recycled waste water. It was May 2006, and a full-scale model of Ms. Kaufmann’s Glidehouse design had been erected at the National Building Museum in Washington. It was, Ms. Kaufmann said, one of the high points for her design-build company, mkDesigns.

There were others. The company had its debut with a bang in 2004 when Sunset magazine chose to feature a model of the Glidehouse in its annual Celebration Weekend event in Menlo Park, Calif. An estimated 25,000 people — builders, architects, potential clients — waited in long lines that formed even before the doors opened to see mkDesigns’ modern take on the prefab home. The overwhelming response jump-started the company, which until that point had been a one-woman operation. It seemed like the right idea at the right time.

Ms. Kaufmann immediately hired a client-services manager to handle the hundreds of customer inquiries she began receiving and set to work building her business. “There hadn’t been a precedent for a green preconfigured home,” Ms. Kaufmann said, “and ours struck a chord.” The firm, based in Oakland, Calif., rapidly earned a reputation for its streamlined modular homes and went on to build a total of 53, mostly on the West Coast.

Ms. Kaufmann built more homes than any of the other dozen or so boutique prefab-home companies that have sprung up in the past decade. These include Resolution 4 Architecture in New York, LivingHomes and Marmol Radziner in Los Angeles, andFlatPak in Minneapolis. While most of the firms emphasized custom designs and high-end prices, mkDesigns aimed to reach a middle market with homes that cost $160 to $180 per square foot, not including the site.

Together, the green prefab companies represent a tiny segment of the home construction market, but with their focus on sustainability and affordability, they offer the prospect of genuinely green homes delivered to a mass market — an alternative to cookie-cutter spec houses and bloated McMansions. “Before the economic meltdown, all builders were looking at prefab in one way or another,” said Leo Marmol, founder of Marmol Radziner.

One reason was the success of similar firms outside the United States. Of all the new single-family houses built in Finland last year, for example, 68 percent were wholly or partly prefabricated, and the home building company Sekisui builds approximately 15,000 modular housing units a year in Japan.

Predictability is one attraction. Home parts are made in a controlled environment and assembled on site, often in a matter of days, meaning weather is less of an issue. And prefab buildings produce about 50 to 75 percent less waste than site-built homes.

Ms. Kaufmann’s first challenge was to find factories that would produce the parts necessary to assemble her homes. “Factories wanted high volume,” she said. And some of them did not want to take on the liability of manufacturing green but untested features, like countertops made of recycled paper.

Even when Ms. Kaufmann found factories that would create what she wanted, the alliances didn’t always last. “We found a factory in Canada that worked well for a while,” she said. “But they got a big order to build workers’ camps in Alaska and told us we would have to add six months to our project schedule, and they doubled the fee. Here we were in contract with a client — it was not acceptable for us to pass that on to them.”

In late 2006, Ms. Kaufmann decided she had no choice but to buy or build her own factory. With capital from one of mkDesigns’s partners, the company bought a modular-home factory in Seattle that was rapidly reconfigured to put out 14 homes a year.

To run the factory, Ms. Kaufmann hired away a manager who had been in charge of laptop production and distribution for Hewlett-Packard in Tokyo. This was in line with Ms. Kaufmann’s vision of creating a hybrid company that straddled the line between architecture and product design. “You could compare one of our homes to an iPod — a really well-designed product that can be customized with different skins and applications,” she said.

Having a manufacturing plant changed the game. “It allowed us to design the elements we wanted and to grow,” Ms. Kaufmann said. “We were wearing two hats and the clients were getting a better product.” The factory was so successful that within two years, it became apparent that the company needed another — larger and more sophisticated. “We didn’t start off with the fanciest factory,” Ms. Kaufmann said. “We were in bootstrapping mode.”

At the height of its success, mkDesigns employed 60 people in the design studio and the factory. Ms. Kaufmann attracted a number of investors willing to put up $100 million to help buy half a dozen factories across the United States. In early 2008, before the economy turned, the firm found a plant in Sacramento that it thought would be perfect. Ms. Kaufmann decided to sell the Seattle plant but leased it back and kept production going.

When the economy did turn, the mortgage collapse made it increasingly difficult for clients to obtain loans. With business declining and the housing climate increasingly uncertain, Ms. Kaufmann decided not to buy the Sacramento plant. “We realized others could do the job much more cheaply than us,” Ms. Kaufmann said. Things had changed. Factories that had previously been reluctant to risk manufacturing unfamiliar parts were now phoning Ms. Kaufmann, hungry for work and offering competitive bids.

But then, in quick succession, two factories she had chosen to work with went out of business. One had taken payment of $700,000 for two homes whose parts they had committed to produce, but mkDesigns had to finance the completion of both homes. The other factory left mkDesigns to finish work on homes whose parts were only partly delivered.

In hindsight, Ms. Kaufmann says she believes that one of her company’s main issues was an inability to create economies of scale. She and her partners had hoped that over time, and as the volume of their output grew, they would create more production and time efficiencies and that their costs would fall. Other practitioners have had similar problems.

“Volume is still one of our biggest challenges,” said Todd Jerry, chief operating officer at Marmol Radziner Prefab. Ms. Kaufmann concedes, too, that she was sometimes overly optimistic about production expenses and priced her homes for less than they actually cost.

Last May, she came to the painful realization that while the company might have been able to cope with one challenge, it could not handle all of its difficulties at once: the collapsing housing market, the closing of the two factories, the financial hits. “We need to close,” she told her staff, which had been pruned to 25.

It was a difficult time. “We had all invested so much of ourselves into the mission of making thoughtful, sustainable design accessible,” Ms. Kaufmann said. “Closing was heartbreaking.”

Last September, a fledgling prefab firm, Blu Homes of Boston, bought the rights to build mkDesigns’ preconfigured home models. Bill Haney, co-founder of Blu Homes, said the company had technologies that would allow it to make the homes more affordable. So far, none have been built. Ms. Kaufmann has opened an architectural studio.

A full-scale model of one of Ms. Kaufmann’s homes, an mkSolaire, continues to stand on the grounds of the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago, a spot that had been occupied previously by only one other house, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. Erected in May 2008, Ms. Kaufmann’s home features a solar-electric generation system and a living roof. Its purpose, according to the museum, is to “show consumers what the future may bring.”

A concrete lounge created by Concreteworks along with The Wiseman Group and Legoretta Architects.

San Francisco Chronicle, April 4 2010

There’s something about concrete that prompts certain people to wax lyrical about its qualities, extol its aesthetic attributes - even to make life-changing decisions.

Take Mark Rogero, founder of Concreteworks in Oakland. In the late 1980s, he was all set for a career as an architect when he discovered the pleasures of pouring concrete. Armed with $3 worth of cement, he had decided to make a kitchen countertop for his New York studio. His first attempt left much to be desired, but he became obsessed with getting it right, tweaking the mold, finessing the troweling.

“You have this murky material made of dirt and water, and it’s like being a kid who wants to play in the mud. It’s seductive,” he says.

Patrick Miller, who opened Bohemian Stoneworks in Sebastopol nine years ago, underwent a similar epiphany. He was a high-tech whiz in Silicon Valley when he started testing out how to make concrete countertops on weekends. He sought help from his father, a civil engineer who specialized in concrete, and soon it became a passion.

“I would be on an airplane to China for work, and all I could think about was formulating mixes and the next piece I would make,” he says.

Concrete as a home design option has come into its own over the past few years, graduating well beyond countertops to include sinks, tubs, fire surrounds, lounge chairs, planters and paving. Specialists such as Concreteworks, Sonoma Cast Stone and Bohemian Stoneworks have pushed the manufacturing boundaries and experimented with new formulas; they add ingredients to create choices on the color spectrum, try different textural finishes and work to make the material more eco-friendly.

Bay Area architects have embraced the flexibility inherent in concrete and the creativity it affords.

“It’s the most plastic, sculptural material you can use,” says David Stark Wilson of WA Design, who employs it often. A home he designed in Berkeley features a concrete fireplace.

‘Nothing better’

“It’s the ‘craziest’ design,” he says, but patently very beautiful. “If you want to shape a complex form, such as an oddly shaped hearth or a sink, there’s nothing better than concrete. You pour it in wet and it dries hard, and it’s fairly forgiving when you grind it to get the desired finish.”

Wilson also loves using metal in his work, but says it’s much harder to achieve the results he strives for with metal than with concrete.

On a recent weekday at Concreteworks’ manufacturing studio in East Oakland, concrete is being poured into dozens of molds to make ridged wall panels for Prospect, Nancy Oakes’ restaurant scheduled to open this year in San Francisco’s Infinity building, a high-rise of luxury condominiums.

In another area, employees are shaking air bubbles out of molds brimful with terra cotta-colored wet concrete, while nearby a custom-sculptured sink has been set out to dry. Rogero is working with a new highly durable, extra-strong concrete composite called Ductal, which is made by French industry giant Lafarge, to craft banquette seating for Bar Agricole, another new restaurant designed by San Francisco architect Aidlin Darling.

In Berkeley, designer Fu-Tung Cheng crafts Asian-inspired water pieces for gardens and sloping countertops that let water flow naturally with contours to cradle fruit and integrated trivets and cutting boards. Cheng is also bringing his concrete gospel to the people with a series of how-to books on making one’s own concrete elements, such as “Concrete at Home” (Taunton Press, 2005) and “Concrete Countertops Made Simple” (Taunton Press, 2008).

Countertops are what familiarized most homeowners to the possibilities of concrete. But the material is not without its issues: One of the first questions many homeowners ask about concrete is how stain-resistant it is.

Fabricators tend to say that if it is well sealed and handled carefully, concrete will withstand normal use as a kitchen countertop. Sonoma Cast Stone says it has developed a truly stain-free concrete. However, architect Wilson always asks his clients if they are sure they want to use concrete for their countertops.

“Like limestone, it’s porous,” he says. “Staining is still a problem.” Concrete is, of course, very heavy too, although the addition of aggregates and new technologies have created lighter varieties.

This stainless steel Fusion sink with river stone is by Bohemian Stoneworks.

‘It started with tile’

Steve Rosenblatt, founder of Sonoma Cast Stone, says he’s observed an evolution in the choices of materials made by homeowners and designers over the years.

“It started with tile, moved to Corian, marble and most recently granite,” he says. As you might expect from a concrete fan, Patrick Miller at Bohemian Stoneworks has issues with slab stone such as CaesarStone and marble, pointing out that much of it is imported, which gives it a high carbon footprint, and that its defined size restricts its potential. “The design possibilities are limited,” he says. “Concrete is fluid and can be shaped in so many ways.”

It has proved tempting to experiment with colors and textures. Concreteworks is casting concrete onto wood-grain textures, almost like a printmaking technique. Sonoma Cast Stone has developed a metal-plated concrete with a copper, nickel, brass, bronze or steel finish. Bohemian Stoneworks offers 30 colors, from Bone through Sangria.

Many claims are made regarding concrete’s sustainability. What’s undeniable is its durability, which in itself gives it high marks on the green scoreboard.

But the manufacture of cement, concrete’s core ingredient, is responsible for about 5 percent of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions, according to the World Business Council for Sustainable Development. This represents a decrease from previous years, after efforts have been made internationally to make production more environmentally friendly, but it still damages concrete’s eco-credentials somewhat.

And local concrete manufacturers are making concrete more sustainably. Miller says the embodied energy of the concrete at Bohemian Stoneworks is very low.

Only recycled water

“We use sand from a site close to the Russian River and only have two deliveries a year,” he says. “Our aggregates are post-industrial materials such as recycled glass. All the water we use is recycled and the lower temperatures at which we heat our concrete means 62 percent less CO{-2} than average.”

Sonoma Cast Stone has developed a patented type of concrete called EarthCrete, which is made from old concrete sidewalks and foundations, ground down until it is as fine as baby powder. It too incorporates recycled glass, as well as porcelain from tubs and sinks bound for the salvage yard. Concreteworks blends fly ash into some of its concrete mixes, as well as glass and rice husks.

And of course the principal perpetrators when it comes to greenhouse emissions from concrete production are not small boutique home design companies, but rather the industrial behemoths here and in countries such as China that manufacture concrete for the construction market.

As concrete builds more of a following among home designers, the local companies that supply it seem determined to stick to their artisan roots.

“The modeling may be becoming more sophisticated, but there’s still a sense it’s a handmade material,” says Rogero.

San Francisco Chronicle, March 28 2010

Photos by Lianne Milton/Special to the Chronicle; Above: Leslie and Chris Lentz

Sometimes a remodel is about more than a desire to improve your house. For Leslie Lentz, redesigning the heart of her St. Helena home proved to be an act of catharsis, one she didn’t realize was needed until the project was complete, the results were displayed before her, and she realized how revitalized she felt.

Lentz and her husband, Chris Lentz, bought their two-bedroom house a few blocks from downtown St. Helena in 2000 after relocating from Minneapolis. Not long after moving, Leslie’s relationship with the business she had founded two decades before began to disintegrate and it quickly became evident she should make a clean break.

Lentz launched Thymes, a lifestyle company specializing in bath and body products, at her kitchen table in Minneapolis in 1982. Over the years, it expanded into a major corporation from which she felt increasingly alienated. The geographical distance didn’t help, but the couple was hooked on the North Bay.

“I grew up in Santa Rosa, and as soon as we came back, it was a case of ‘when the horse smells the barn’ it wants to stay put,” she says.

Lentz negotiated a buyout from Thymes and turned her attention to her home, which had been designed in the late 1990s by an architect as a home for his parents. The house reminded the couple of the townhome they had built for themselves in Minneapolis, and initially they didn’t see much wrong with it. Then one day Lentz decided that the stained kitchen cabinets probably needed attention and brought in architects Peter Collins and Mark Creedon from M2 Studio, which has offices in St. Helena and Berkeley, to see if they had some good ideas for what might take their place.

Plans expanded

Before long Collins and Lentz were discussing a full-blown revamp of the kitchen-dining area. Together they decided to focus their attention on the heart of the house, the place they spent the most time, as a way of getting the most value out of their budget of $450,000. Their discussions kept returning to a dividing wall that separated the kitchen and dining room. They were on the same page when it came to how obstructive it was.

“Normally when I talk about spatial characteristics I have to use laymen’s terms, but Leslie was already one step ahead,” says Collins. The two agreed that the wall was creating unnecessary pathways and choke points and that it should come down.

In its place, Collins suggested they put in a low-level, partial divider that could be both functional and aesthetically pleasing. This immediately appealed to Lentz, whose zest for collecting had gone to new heights. She was eager for a way to showcase her acquisitions.

“With the stress of leaving the company, I was spending a lot of time on eBay,” she says. Her current passion is for European midcentury pottery, including some distinctive pieces from Germany in a style known as Fat Lava, Rosenthal porcelain, and glass by Kosta Boda, as well as American manufacturer Blenko from the 1950s and 1960s.

A grouping of her pieces is now shown to beautiful effect on a unit that ended up being a collaborative design effort and a work of sculptural art all by itself. Three types of wood - quarter-sawn wenge, ipe and rift-sawn white oak - were used to craft the divider, which comprises a bar area, a pantry and a desk, as well as a display space. The deep orange hues of the Fat Lava ceramics are set off by a backdrop of corrugated glass panels.

Midcentury vibe

For the base of the bar section Collins and Lentz turned to their friend Daniel Hale, a St. Helena artist who created a textured wood cladding with a midcentury vibe. Its style is echoed in a pair of plaster light sconces that he designed for a nearby wall.

The new kitchen cabinets were custom-crafted in a white oak veneer by local woodworker Jeff Menchaca, and the generous-size countertops are cut from polished Eurostone. No handles are visible, Lentz having asked for a streamlined look, and there are separate areas for the couple to cook or prepare coffee. She picked out a vibrant retro-style tile by Ann Sacks for the range backsplash.

Opening up the space also created an opportunity to connect the outdoor courtyard more directly to the interior, especially after a large opening was put in for a sliding pocket door. Until then, the couple had barely used the outdoor space because it was something of a heat trap. After exploring options - including involved discussions with a ship chandler in Sausalito about rigging possibilities - Collins designed an elaborate but elegant trellis that combines wood beams and tension rods. Engineered like an inverted suspension bridge, the trellis provides much-needed shade as well as supports for climbing plants.

Now when the Lentzes throw parties, there are no more congested groupings - everyone mills around the breathable, open-plan interior and courtyard. They both appreciate the new kitchen-dining room’s changing light, its easy functionality and its textures, but it goes further than that.

“This home project was a saving grace,” she says. After channeling her creative energies for so many years into her business, being able to design her home was like opening a new box of crayons. “It helped me move on to another vision.”

Financial Times, March 20 2010

It is either a vision for a new residential utopia in one of the most beautiful spots in the world or the most ill-conceived plan for a new city for a long time. Opinion is divided on a proposal to transform Treasure Island, a 400-acre man-made outcrop with picture-postcard views of San Francisco, into an environmentally sustainable neighbourhood for up to 24,000 residents.

Its supporters appear to be in the ascendant and the result could, they say, create some of the world’s hottest properties; but whether their dream is fulfilled or not the project has some important lessons as cities throughout the world look to islands, both natural and man-made, to try to solve their expansion, transport and housing problems.

Originally built in 1936 to host the Golden Gate International Exposition, Treasure Island is just a couple of miles offshore from San Francisco and considered within its city limits. It is connected by a small isthmus to Yerba Buena Island, the landing point of the Bay Bridge, the only overland link between San Francisco and the East Bay and its urban hubs of Oakland and Berkeley.

Treasure Island’s flat, windswept terrain is home to about 1,400 residents and many abandoned military buildings, oil facilities and electrical transformers. There is little here to connect the site to the book that inspired its name – the site is named after the novel by Robert Louis Stevenson, who lived in San Francisco from 1879 to 1880 – or to suggest the glorious future that is being heralded for it.

Owned by the US Navy, the island was decommissioned in 1996. Last December San Francisco’s mayor, Gavin Newsom, negotiated to buy it in a deal that will see the navy receiving a guaranteed $55m over 10 years from the city, plus an additional $50m if the private investors involved in the project get an 18 per cent return. Newsom is confident the project can be a showcase development, citing the thousands of jobs that will be created and the fact that the money to pay the navy will come from developers, not city coffers. This is a potential sore point for a city that is facing a $522m budget deficit next year.

The proposals are ambitious, particularly in terms of sustainable building – concerns likely to be associated with any island development project and expensive, at an estimated cost of $1.4bn. A master plan developed for the island by architectural and engineering services company Skidmore, Owings and Merrill details up to 8,000 new homes, 30 per cent of which would be affordable to those on lower incomes, several solar-powered skyscrapers, an organic farm, three hotels, several shops and restaurants, a waste-water treatment plant and 300 acres of recreational land. The project’s private development team is a partnership of local company Wilson Meany Sullivan, national homebuilder Lennar Urban and private equity real estate development firm Kenwood Investments.

All of the island’s new streets would be set at a 68° north-south angle in order to minimise wind exposure and two old naval aircraft hangars would be recycled into retail and entertainment centres. Terminal 1, an imposing building featured in the film Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, would be transformed into a ferry terminal.

On the environmental front, roof-top turbines would provide buildings with power and solar heating systems in the residential areas would supply up to 80 per cent of the new neighbourhood’s hot-water needs. San Francisco has already aggressively reduced the amount of rubbish it sends to landfills but it has upped the ante for Treasure Island, aiming to zero-out solid waste by 2020.

With chronic drought affecting cities across California, water conservation is key. A quarter of the island’s treated water would be recycled for irrigating its farm, as well as for flushing toilets in commercial buildings and washing boats in the marina. The island would still get its potable water from the mainland but, through recycling and conservation measures, it is estimated it would use only 218m gallons per year.

Finally, large-scale wind turbines would be installed in the uninhabited area for energy generation.

The design, which comes in the wake of many years of planning, has already earned a number of awards, including an American Institute of Architects National Honor Award and recognition by the Clinton Climate Initiative, former US president Bill Clinton’s greenhouse gas campaign.

However, sceptics question whether it is sensible to develop an island built out of seismically unsafe sand and gravel in an area of the world known for its earthquakes. In addition, conservation experts predict climate change will raise sea levels more than 4½ft by 2100, casting doubts over the wisdom of developing the island and similar sites worldwide.

“These 400 acres are an example of what can happen to 280 sq miles in the greater San Francisco area,” says Will Travis, executive director at the Bay Conservation and Development Commission, which has jurisdiction over part of the Treasure Island project. He cites places such as downtown San Francisco, its international airport and the newly developed Mission Bay neighbourhood, which are all built on land susceptible to flooding in future. “The obvious strategy is a planned retreat and certainly not to build anything new,” he says. “But instead we are opting for innovation and to adapt to the sea level rise.” He says the levees that are part and parcel of the development designs will be increased in height over time at no cost to the taxpayer.

His attitude to the seismic issue is similarly bullish. “The Bay Area is a bad place to build anything. But we have learned how to build for earthquakes.” He says the advantage of Treasure Island is that it offers the opportunity to start from scratch with the most up-to-date expertise.

There are also transportation issues. Bart, the region’s subway network, does not stop there and the Bay Bridge provides the only road access. Its east span is currently being replaced and is already over capacity and adding thousands of cars could take it to the brink. Travis points out that the goal is to create a compact, mixed-use residential community which is not car-dependent. “There will be a new ferry terminal and buses to San Francisco and the East Bay. A whole fleet of new ferries is currently under construction,” he adds, and mentions Vancouver, site of the recent winter Olympics, as a model for a transit-focused city.

Ruth Gravanis, an environmental advocate in San Francisco, has been monitoring the designs for Treasure Island since 1996. She is supportive of the proposals and feels they have been improved incrementally over time. “As other cities have introduced green initiatives, it has forced this plan to stay in the vanguard,” she says. She likes the fact that housing units are not automatically being sold or rented with parking spaces included and that amenities for cyclists and pedestrians have been incorporated into the proposals. But she believes that for a project attempting to minimise its carbon footprint, there is still too much space devoted to parking. “But I’m cautiously optimistic. They’ve made lots of good changes,” she says. “At first the ferry was going to go the east side of the island. Now it’s the west. It took them a while but they saw sense in the end.”

If San Francisco can keep the project on track and crunch the numbers to make it work, it seems as if support for the development will help push it through. And with cities consuming 75 per cent of our natural resources, a blank-canvas development such this one might just become a blueprint for new communities the world over.

Insular appeal: The enduring allure of the artificial

San Francisco’s Treasure Island is not the only island that was originally built for an international exhibition. Ile Notre-Dame was built in 10 months – from 15m tons of rocks excavated to create the Montreal metro – for Expo 67, a celebration of Canada’s centennial. Expo 67 is considered to have been the most successful world fair of the 20th century, with more than 50m visitors and 62 nations participating. Today the island hosts the Canadian Formula One Grand Prix and much of the open land is enjoyed by rowers, cyclists and, in the winter, ice skaters.

Perhaps the world’s best known artificial islands are in Dubai, where an ambitious initiative has created the Palm Islands and the World Islands, among others, both of which make a dramatic impression when viewed from the sky. The economic downturn has put a halt to the government’s plans to build more islands and so far only the Palm Jumeirah is inhabited. Celebrities such as actor Brad Pitt and soccer players David Beckham and Michael Owen are among those believed to have bought homes there.

Several of the world’s airports have been sited on artificial islands and when London mayor Boris Johnson announced in 2008 that the city’s Heathrow Airport was a “planning error” and that a new airport should be built on an island on the Thames estuary, he might have had Kansai International Airport in his mind’s eye. Located on an artificial island in the middle of Osaka Bay in Japan, Kansai was designed by architect Renzo Piano and opened in 1994. Twenty years in the planning, it became the most expensive civil works project in modern history – costing in excess of $20bn – not least because it was discovered that the island had sunk eight metres as a result of the weight of the material used in construction.

Other airports on islands include Chubu Centrair International Airport, New Kitakyushu Airport and Kobe Airport, all in Japan. Hong Kong International Airport, designed by Foster & Partners, was created using land reclamation from the existing islands of Chek Lap Kok and Lam Chau.

San Francisco Chronicle, February 21, 2010

Photographs by Peter DaSilva for The Chronicle.

If you had told Ruth Bailey a few years ago that she would one day be back living in the home in which she grew up, a ranch-style house in Orinda, she would probably have laughed. Bailey, whose family’s roots run deep in this lush part of Contra Costa County, was in a home she loved, also in Orinda, with views that allowed her to watch the fog rolling in over the hills.

The vistas from her childhood home were less expansive, although in their own way just as compelling. For the property’s piece de resistance was without a doubt its garden, cultivated over many years by Bailey’s father, something of a renaissance man, whose passions included Japanese architecture and nurturing prize rhododendrons.

With its beautiful landscaping and abundance of mature trees - all planted since 1963 when the estate was bought by the Bailey family - it is no surprise to hear that the garden is a regular on the garden tour circuit. But when Bailey decided to take over the property from her father, Fred Cummings, after tending it became too much of an effort for him, the house itself left something to be desired. “It was dark with lots of hallways and corridors,” she says. “You were always turning corners.”

Bailey consulted Jon Larson and Carolyn Van Lang from Jarvis Architects in Oakland, with whom she had worked before, and asked them to consider how the house could be modernized while retaining its midcentury modern spirit and Japanese-influenced aesthetic. In December, the home received the Mayor’s Award for Excellence in Architecture.

When he built the home, Cummings had been inspired by no less than Katsura, the Imperial Villa in Kyoto, and his daughter was keen to retain those design touches in the remodel.

No more darkness

Working with contractor Whitney Collins, the architects began work in January of last year by gutting the interior of the house to eradicate all the nooks and crannies. The addition of a few inconspicuous skylights and new sets of sliding, floor-to-ceiling glass doors provided the home with the natural light it badly needed.

The kitchen, which had previously been both small and awkward, was relocated to the front of the house with an adjoining patio and outdoor barbecue area.

A five-bedroom home that had served a family raising four children well, was transformed in 10 months into an airy three-bedroom, four-bathroom home for one of those same children whose own offspring have flown the nest.

The space gained in the reconfiguration has been given over to a sweep of three distinct areas - living room, dining room and family den - which can be kept open-plan when entertaining, or made more intimate using sets of sliding shoji-style doors featuring bands of frosted glass.

The original coffered ceilings have been stained a warm walnut and enhanced with recessed lighting. Horizontal bands of walnut trim complement the ceiling and, with their strong linear forms, contribute to the Japanese feel. Architect Van Lang says the repeating horizontal lines are known to create a soothing effect.

Now that the house has been opened up, the sumptuous garden is visible from every room with discrete, always lovely vistas framed by the large windows and plate-glass doors. Two smoothly planed support posts inside the living area echo those used outside under the home’s roof overhang, and mirror the multitude of trees in the yard.

Bailey recalls that the property was originally a horse pasture - the original barn still stands on the grounds of the home - and the first trees planted by her parents were some Scarlet oaks and a zelkova.

“My grandmother gave my mother a seedling Magnolia that was planted by the garage. My mom’s best friend then gave Mom a seedling Catalpa tree in a coffee can. That was the start of the shade required for my dad’s rhododendrons. And he went wild for another 40 years with shade trees (maples, dogwoods, oaks, pines, magnolias).

“And my siblings and I got seedling redwoods in milk cartons in grammar school on Arbor Day. It’s got to the point now where it’s hard to grow plants requiring a lot of light. My mom’s attitude is ‘no more trees.’ ”

Another whimsical touch, very much in tune with the Japonesque style of the house, is the waterfall and fish pond put in by Cummings, who has since passed away. The pond now bursts with giant koi and outsize goldfish.

A bigger bedroom

Bailey’s bedroom is the one she slept in as a child, although barely recognizable as such. Now a generous-size corner room enveloped by the greenery of a lush lawn and gentle hillside outside, it also boasts a magnificent master bathroom with a tub enclosed in frameless glass that offers views of the walled moss and stone garden outside shaded by the canopy of a tall tree.

“I feel like the house has been recycled while being totally transformed. I love it,” says Bailey, pointing out that the house’s footprint has remained the same, and many of her parents’ Japanese antiques still look completely at home in the remodel.

An element of drama was introduced in the previously unprepossessing entryway by opening up walls and raising the ceiling height. The finishing touch was a new, curved Venetian plaster wall at the apex of which a large skylight creates a well of sunlight which pours down, via a staircase, into the lower level of the home. This is where Bailey has her study.

The front door is the same one that Bailey’s mother, Clare Cummings, commissioned after seeing a House Beautiful article reporting on Japanese influence in American architecture. The piece was headlined “Old Story - Being Told Again,” which seems appropriate given that it could equally be applied to the approach that was taken with this remodel.

San Francisco Chronicle, January 17 2010

Photos: Matthew Millman

English manor or French chateau, marble staircases or chandeliers - it helps to know precisely what you don’t want when looking for a home. But when one of those deal-breakers pops up at every open house, it might be better to start from scratch, as one Peninsula couple decided.

When they began their search two years ago, they coveted something contemporary but not stark - a good-looking home that would be functional. This would not be a home for grand entertaining or formal living but rather a place where the children, ages 11, 8 and 3, could run free and their parents could enjoy a kick-back lifestyle against a backdrop that had more than a modicum of style.

Clutching copies of Dwell magazine, the couple visited architect Cass Calder Smith of CCS Architecture to see if he could help them create what they wanted. Smith splits his time between San Francisco and New York and is known for restaurant designs, including Perbacco and Terzo, as well as residential projects. A visit to the 1-acre site the couple had bought in Los Altos Hills sealed the deal.

“Cass had great suggestions for the lot, which is both an odd shape and steep, in areas,” says the owner.

Smith designed a dwelling in three parts - the main house, the garage and a pool house - separated by breezeways to maximize natural light and create generous open spaces. The effect, on a lot studded with pepper, apricot and citrus trees, is of a contemporary, rural compound. This area of Los Altos Hills was a farming community known for its bountiful apricot orchards.

The boundaries between the home’s interiors and the property’s outside spaces are seamless. Large sliding doors open from the open-plan family room, kitchen and dining area to the west-facing garden. Both the breezeway linking the house to the garage and a huge deck leading from the master suite create more exterior areas.

“The deck is like a whole other playground,” the owner says, adding that they recently hosted a children’s birthday party where all the action was outdoors. “There were light-saber fights on the breezeway and water-pistol games from all over the place,” she says.

The home’s front door leads directly into a cozy living room with a fireplace. The rest of the floor is one big, open space divided by wood-clad boxes used for storage and to hide pipes and wiring. The house as a whole boasts ample storage, a consequence of the client reminding the architect periodically that more is always better when there’s a family involved. The second-floor bedroom is shaped like a long bar and is rotated in relation to the first floor, creating a sheltered space below.

The lower level comprises a media room and guest suite, and a mudroom with more storage space.

With its use of wood and other natural materials, the feel of the home is California modern rather than sleek minimalist modern. “We were led by the clients,” says Smith. “Just like them, the home is casual and warm, not fancy.”

Both the clients and Smith wanted to incorporate as many sustainable elements as possible into the design. Thus, solar panels heat the pool and contribute significantly to reducing the family’s electricity bills. The roof is made of efficient, structurally insulated panels. There is recycled denim insulation, built-in natural ventilation and sunshades on most of the doors, and windows with deep overhangs to temper the light and decrease heat gain in the summer.

One decision the owners made early on was to focus the budget on the architecture and spend less on elements such as the finishes and furniture (see “Money-saving tips”). The result, says Smith, illustrates how one can create a modern home that is timeless but not overly expensive.

“Some people want to create a masterpiece or a ‘final resting place,’ and the home might end up being amazing, but it requires a huge investment of time and money. Here we didn’t want to design an icon or an unnecessary burden for our clients. Its success is due to its configuration of space and light and because the project was driven by all the supporting characters.”

Smith has a term to describe the result: “everyday modernism.”