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.”

New York Times, May 27 2010

Biz Stone. Photo: Phil McCarten/Reuters.

Biz Stone co-founded the micro-blogging service Twitter with Evan Williams in 2007. They met seven years ago when they both worked at Google. Stone earned an arts scholarship to the University of Massachusetts but dropped out to work as a designer at the book publisher Little, Brown in Boston.

In 1999, he helped start the blogging community Web site Xanga. Originally from Boston, Stone lives with his wife, Livia, in Marin County. Here, edited and condensed, are excerpts of his description of a leisure day. (Yes, he does post to Twitter during his time off.)

Frisky Fidos | My wife, Livy, and I wake up at 7 every morning, including Sunday. We’ve got two rescue dogs that get a little feisty if we don’t feed them: there’s Pedro, the one-eyed Chihuahua, and Maggie. Once the animals are sated, I usually do a quick check of e-mail and online news with a glass of water.

Culinary Mash-up | A typical Sunday morning starts with something I don’t usually bother with — breakfast. Livy puts together something for us to eat. Lately, it’s been southern style biscuits from scratch. We’re both vegan. Her dad is from Nashville and her mom is from Istanbul, so there’s an interesting range of influence in her cooking. Then we take the dogs out. Living in Marin means we can take them to so many beautiful spots, but, ironically, one of their favorite places is an office park near our house.

Memo From the Boss | There is work on my Sunday agenda. For almost two years now, I’ve been sending out a weekly e-mail address to employees, board members, investors and advisers. The e-mail covers accomplishments, mistakes, news, some funny personal anecdotes, recognition for a few team members. It takes a few hours to research and write. I’ll often go to a local Starbucks because it removes the distractions of home. I plan my whole Sunday around writing the e-mail. We’re going to be thrown for a loop when the opera season starts, as our tickets are all for Sunday matinees. I do Twitter on Sundays, but I always keep it under 140 characters.

Running the Sun Down | On Saturday, I do an eight-mile run, and on Sunday I do a 10-mile run. Richardson Bay from Mill Valley to Tiburon and back is a favorite route. I’m partial to timing my runs just as the sun starts to set.

Far From the Madding Crowd | We moved from Berkeley to Marin several months ago. I’m coming to appreciate country living, especially on the weekend because it’s more relaxing. We’re in Larkspur, which is generally quiet on Sunday. The spot is more commercial than neighborhoody, but it’s pretty fun that I can ride a boat to work on Monday mornings.

As the Day Turns | “How To Make It In America” comes on HBO on Sunday night, so I like to watch that if I can. I generally turn in around midnight no matter what day it is.

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.

New York Times, May 7 2010

Parker Douglas, left, and Eric Burnstein heading to the Camp Herms Boy Scout Camp above Arlington Park in El Cerrito. Photos: Thor Swift for the New York Times.

Last summer, it all seemed so simple. The cellular telephone company T-Mobile approached the Mount Diablo Silverado Council — Boy Scouts of America to see if it would allow construction of a cellphone tower at Camp Herms, the group’s 23-acre hillside property above Arlington Park in the El Cerrito hills.

The company’s offer included a payment of $2,200 a month for 30 years, money the scout group said would help finance remodeling work at the camp and allow it to create additional programs. The scout council accepted the offer.

What it did not anticipate was the reaction from its members and camp neighbors.

Seven hundred people signed a petition protesting the proposed tower, 250 letters were sent to the scout organization, at least one scout master threatened to move his troop, and a local childcare center and the Sierra Clubadded their names to an orchestrated campaign against the tower. At the center of their opposition are concerns over health risks, particularly for children.

“We were stunned by the response,” said Valerie Ridgers, Mount Diablo Silverado Council’s assistant scout executive. “The tower would look like a tree, and there are no health hazards. The last thing we would ever do is put something up that would harm our scouts.”

The project has been put on hold while T-Mobile does a review, though the company will not say whether this is a result of the protests.

A sense of déjà vu is palpable. Community resistance to cell sites has been common since the mid-1990s, when the first big wave of cellphone tower construction began. In San Francisco, residents are organizing against proposed T-Mobile wireless facilities in at least six neighborhoods: the Sunset, Outer Sunset, the Mission, Miraloma Park, North of Panhandle and Presidio Heights.

In February, the Walnut Creek School District rejected a lease agreement with Clearwire to install a 37-foot wireless broadband Internet antenna at the Walnut Heights Elementary School.

But if the fights are familiar, the context has changed. The question surrounding the protest over the El Cerrito tower and other proposed locations for antennas is: How much coverage is enough? How many camouflaged antenna-trees must be introduced into the landscape to keep all those iPhone apps humming?

The 1996 Telecommunications Act prevents state and local governments from considering health concerns in locating wireless facilities. So the battles are often fought over aesthetics and need.

The growing popularity of smart phones, in particular, is driving demand for more cell sites. Sales of mobile phones stood at 1.2 billion worldwide in 2009, according to figures from Gartner, an information technology research and advisory company, and sales of smart phones rose to 172.4 million in 2009, up 24 percent from 2008.

AT&T says wireless data traffic on its network has grown more than 5,000 percent over the past three years. It says its wireline and wireless investment in California will total $18 billion to $19 billion this year, up 5 percent to 10 percent over 2009, with the addition of at least 200 new cell sites and upgrading about 500 additional sites.

Sprint says the Bay Area is one of its top 10 markets in terms of subscriber demand. Tower Source of Colorado Springs, which maintains an extensive database of cellphone tower sites, calculates there are 2,925 sites in the greater Bay Area, each with multiple carriers.

Nationwide, Tower Source said, demand for sites is increasing at about 13 percent annually.

The San Francisco Neighborhood Antenna Free Union estimates there are upwards of 500 locations and more than 2,500 individual antennas serving San Francisco, not including antennas on light and utility poles in the city’s public rights-of-way, or unlicensed WiFi hotspots in homes, coffee shop and libraries.

This is still not proving to be enough in some parts of the city. To address complaints of patchy iPhone signals, AT&T last month introduced Micro-Cells, miniature towers for inside offices or living rooms, which cost $150.

But as the infrastructure needs grow, opposition is becoming more vocal. In El Cerrito, a group calling itself Arlington Park Against Cell Tower has conducted its own research, which it says proves that local mobile phone signal strength is more than adequate. It suggests T-Mobile does not need the tower to improve coverage because it has a tower a half-mile away at Moeser Lane and Arlington Drive, and says a tower would lower values of nearby properties.

And despite assurances that there is no scientific basis for health worries — the Federal Communications Commission says there is no risk from the radio frequency radiation emitted from cell sites — worries persist.

Scott Houser, who leads El Cerrito Scout Troop 104, said that if the cell tower was erected, he would push to move his troop.

“We have this pristine gem in the city in the great outdoors, and I am fearful of the health hazards of a cell tower,” Mr. Houser said.

Nancy Kelleher runs Hug A Bug Pre-School, which is a few hundred feet from where the tower would stand. “There are no guarantees this is safe,” Ms. Kelleher said, “and it’s always after the fact that we find out there are health hazards in cases like this.”

“Child care is a competitive field,” she added. “I might have to relocate.”

Last month, Mayor Gavin Newsom of San Francisco signed a Board of Supervisors resolution calling on the federal Environmental Protection Agency to study the health effects of wireless facilities and requesting the repeal of the limitations that prevent health concerns being considered in cell site siting cases.

Mr. Newsom also supports a bill written by State Senator Mark Leno, Democrat of San Francisco, that would make San Francisco the first city in the country to require that cellphone retailers label their devices with the level of radiation they emit.

But impeding the expansion of the wireless network is a tall order. Roger Entner, an analyst at Nielsen Mobile, said that there were plenty of cases where municipalities had said no to a proposed cell site, but that “every single time, the municipality zoning board blinked and settled.”

Nonetheless, Doug Loranger, co-founder of the Coalition for Local Oversight of Utility Technologies, a nationwide organization working to change federal policy on cell towers and other wireless facilities, said he believed that legislation was tilting in favor of local governments.

Mr. Loranger cited the example of John Avalos, a San Francisco supervisor who is preparing legislation to institute a new permitting process for antennas proposed in public rights of way. He also mentioned the city of Glendale in suburban Los Angeles.

“After an 18-month moratorium on new cell sites that will end this June,” Mr. Loranger said, “Glendale will have adopted one of the most stringent celltower-siting ordinances in the state of California.” The ordinance will increase the city’s oversight of the placement of antennae; cellular equipment proposed for residential areas will face a more intense review process; and carriers may need to prove why the equipment is needed.

In El Cerrito, which, according to the city’s Planning Department, currently has 12 cellphone towers, the debate over another one being put up in Camp Herms is in limbo.

On March 30, T-Mobile informed the city that it was putting its application on hold.

“We want to further evaluate our network in El Cerrito,” said Rod De La Rosa, senior external affairs manager at the company.

Not every El Cerrito resident opposes the tower. Tracy Sichterman, a real estate agent who lives in the Arlington Park neighborhood, said: “I believe the debate about the need for cellphone coverage ended when consumer demand put a cellphone, or P.D.A., in nearly every hand including those of many of our children. Parks and open areas away from homes may make good location candidates for new towers.”

Ms. Sichterman said the effect on home values related to visual impact.

“Real estate values are clearly affected when an electrical or cell tower looms over a property’s backyard,” she said, “but this impact quickly diminishes when the tower is distant.”

On the other hand, Ms. Sichterman has started to see “poor cellphone reception” appear as a property defect in real-estate disclosure statements. “Some buyers, particularly those who work remotely, consider this to be a material concern when purchasing a home,” she said.

New York Times, May 2 2010

Photo: Thor Swift for the New York Times

Evan Shively was a chef at Postrio, the San Francisco restaurant owned by Wolfgang Puck, when it opened in 1989. The restaurant has since closed, and Mr. Shively now runs Arborica, a salvaged wood mill in Marshall that supplies architects and designers with reclaimed walnut, redwood and cypress with which to fashion floors, tables and doors. He lives next to the mill with his partner, the artist Madeleine Fitzpatrick. Mr. Shively visits the Occidental Arts and Ecology Center in Sonoma County regularly because, he said, its mission to preserve and restore native biodiversity mirrors his desire to be a steward of the land. (His words have been edited and condensed.)

HUMBLE BEGINNINGS The center is not an inherently exalted spot. It’s a random Californian hillside not unlike many others, a hardscrabble adobe that, year after year, has been added to and enriched, letting it manifest itself over time. Somebody chose to make it extraordinary, which is what makes it inspiring.

ORIGINS OF THE SPECIES I was a puppy prep cook — just starting out at Oliveto in Oakland — when I discovered this place. I wanted to find the source of some beautiful herbal greens that came into the restaurant.

RHYTHMS OF NATURE I think of myself as under pressure because the logs roll in, and if something is not done with them, they’re lost. But, here, the commitment to the effort is so sustained. They have a seed-saving garden that has to be grown out every five years. I look at all the plants and vegetables here and appreciate the fact that it’s a place that values diversity. When I visit, I see varieties of fava beans and garlic I’ve never seen before. And the flowers are woven in for the aesthetics.

Photo: Laura Morton for the New York Times

Several times a week, Daniel Handler and his 5-year-old son, Otto, walk from their home in Ashbury Heights to the Randall Museum, which sits on Corona Heights with spectacular views of San Francisco. Mr. Handler, the author of the best-selling series of children’s books, “A Series of Unfortunate Events” (under the pen name Lemony Snicket), has also written three novels. His current projects include a fourth novel, a children’s picture book titled “13 Words,” and the script for the second Lemony Snicket movie.

OFF LEASH This is my son’s favorite place to run amok. We go to the museum and to “lawsuit park” nearby — a playground which hasn’t been given the nervous-parent treatment yet. There are two dog parks. My son loves dogs but we don’t have one, so he gets to “rent” one here and frolic with it. It feels like he’s a dog, as he runs off energy while I drink mint tea and make chitchat.

ANIMAL BEHAVIOR It’s not unusual for us to stroll down very early and stand around with other hung-over owners of small creatures.

ALL SENTIMENTAL I grew up coming to this museum — they used to have a huge taxidermy bear in the lobby, it was up on its hind legs. I would do rock-polishing classes here after school. One of the joys of revisiting old haunts is that it makes you feel younger and older at the same time. I remember being here as a kid, and now I come here with my son, but I wish I could make that sound less “Hallmarky.”

BLOWING OUT THE COBWEBS I sit at a bench and table with my back to the view, like Gertrude Stein. Otto runs around while I feign interest. I have a fantasy that I’ll bring a pen and write like Lord Byron, but it can get quite windy. So I come here when I feel like a blithering idiot and need to empty out my head.

New York Times, April 9 2010

Isabel Allende and William Gordon. Photo by Heidi Schumann/New York Times.

Isabel Allende always begins writing a new book on Jan. 8, a tradition that began in 1981 with a letter she wrote to her dying grandfather that would become the groundwork for her first novel, “The House of Spirits.” Since then, Ms. Allende has written 17 books, among them “Paula,” a memoir in the form of a letter to her daughter who died in 1992. Born in Chile in 1942, Ms. Allende fled to Venezuela when her family began receiving death threats after the military coup that brought Augusto Pinochet to power in 1973. She is first cousin once removed to President Salvador Allende, who died in the coup. She lives in Marin County with her second husband, William Gordon. (Her words have been edited and condensed.)

CANINE PRIORITIES The first hint of light through the curtains wakes up Olive, our dog, and then our day starts. She jumps on the bed and demands her breakfast. We rescued her, and now we serve her.

MORNING RITUALS Willie, my husband, brings me a big — really big — cup of coffee with milk in bed. I drink my coffee slowly, enjoying the moment. Then we take Olive for a walk, usually to Samuel P. Taylor State Park. I have a favorite trail where I always reflect or pray a little. It’s where we scattered my daughter’s ashes. We stop at Two Bird Cafe in West Marin or Comforts in San Anselmo for breakfast. Coffee and toast is good enough, sometimes oatmeal.

DAILY MISSIVE We do some chores, like Costco, or the Farmers’ Market. At home, Willie reads the paper while I write to my mother, who is 90 and lives in Chile. I write to her every day, and she responds with beautiful, handwritten letters.

NURTURING THE TRIBE In summer we may have a full house on Sunday. When I moved here, I missed my extended Chilean family, so slowly I put together my “tribe.” We are between 10 and 17 people. If the tribe is coming for dinner, I cook the main course and sometimes dessert. Willie cooks the rest of the week; Sunday is his day off. In winter I may cook a Chilean vegetable stew (charquicán) and filet mignon, or a coq au vin, or beef stew. For dessert, a Chilean flan de leche, my son’s favorite.

FAMILY TIME My Sundays are ideal, especially when the family is around. I love to have all the kids in the pool (five grandchildren plus their friends), the women in the kitchen cooking and gossiping, the men watching a game. It’s like an Italian movie.

A SCRIBE’S CALL I try not to work on Sundays, but if I am in my writing time (Jan. 8 to around May), I may sneak to my casita to work if we have no guests. The casita was meant to be the pool house, but it ended up being my studio. I’m working on another novel, and I’m very busy now.

EARLY RETIREMENT If we are alone, we may watch a movie in bed. If we have company, Willie and Olive go to bed early, often before the guests leave. I go to bed later.

 

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.”