Tracey Taylor

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN THE PAGE TO SEE MORE ARTICLES IN THIS CATEGORY.

San Francisco Chronicle, May 10 2009

Restoring a grand old home is always fraught with difficulties - not the least of which is dealing with all the neighbors, city officials and even perfect strangers who inevitably will weigh in on how the refurbishment should be approached.

But when Alan Sagatelyan and his wife, Maryam Monsef, first set eyes on 924 Grove St. in San Francisco’s Alamo Square neighborhood, one thing was clear: If the facade bore testimony to the embellishments popular with Richardsonian architects at the turn of the century, there wouldn’t be much left to preserve inside the 5,100-square-foot house.

“An elderly lady lived here with six cats and five dogs,” Sagatelyan says, describing the state of the stately home when they discovered it in 2005. “There were a number of illegal apartments, five kitchens, a strange platform stage in one area and lots of staircases. The one thing the interiors lacked completely was architectural details.”

So the couple decided to strip the house back to its bare bones and create, from scratch and with the help of Topetcher Architecture, a contemporary interior while retaining the original facade, with its baby blue paint, intricate stucco and ornate cast iron work.

The $3,390,000 home doesn’t lack historical pedigree. It was designed in 1903 by architect Frank Van Trees for Joseph Colgate-McQueen of toothpaste fame and his new wife, with whom he had just moved from the East Coast.

It’s fair to say, however, that Mr. Colgate would be in for a surprise if he were to walk though his front door today. For inside all is white and light - long swathes of pristine, snowy walls are punctuated by the outsize bay windows that were typical of the period.

The first-floor entryway leads past several ancillary rooms that could serve a variety of functions - one has been staged as a poker den - as well as a state-of-the-art media room, whose entertainment system pipes music throughout the four-story house.

French doors at the back of the home lead to a charming, if small, garden. There, the home’s original carriage house has been transformed into a guest cottage/studio. This level also includes a newly installed garage whose door opens onto the street.

On the second floor the contemporary vibe comes on full force: a sweeping open-plan space takes in a living room with gas fireplace overlooking Grove Street’s collection of ornate Victorians, a dining area and great room that encompasses what is described as an “entertainment play space” and an ample cook’s kitchen. A Dwan dumbwaiter will enable the future owner to bring groceries or supplies from the garage to the kitchen, and a wall of glass folds back for outside entertaining on one of the home’s many decks.

There are interesting architectural touches on the upper floors, including a clear glass bridge that connects the front to the rear part of the house on the third floor. The top-floor suite includes a fireplace and private deck with views of downtown and Pacific Heights - the rooftop aspect with its smattering of brick chimney pots brings to mind the dancing feet of Mary Poppins - as well as a spa bathroom featuring a double shower steam room and Kohler Sok overflowing infinity tub.

All the home’s structural elements have been overhauled: There are a new foundation, roof and electrics, and heating is supplied by a Hydronics in-floor radiant heat system.

According to an article in Forbes last year, houses in the Alamo Square neighborhood - bounded on the north by Golden Gate Avenue, on the south by Fell Street and on the east and west by Laguna and Divisadero streets - have, since 1990, seen the highest rate of appreciation (522 percent) in the city. And a story in The Chronicle in November reported on the neighborhood’s recent gentrification after a long period of decline. Jhoanne Loubé, who did much of the Colgate Mansion’s staging, lives nearby and says she’s seen an influx of families buying homes there. “It’s an eclectic area, very central and walkable. I love it,” she says.

Other properties for sale in the neighborhood include a school at Grove Street and Alamo Square, and 925 Fulton St., a restored six-bedroom Queen Anne home. Each of the properties is listed at $2.75 million.

SCROLL DOWN THE PAGE TO SEE ALL THE ARTICLES IN THIS CATEGORY.

San Francisco Chronicle, May 24 2009.

Blame it on Pixar. That’s where Gina Malewicz caught the midcentury modern bug while working as an art manager on the animation studio’s 2004 movie “The Incredibles.”

The film, she says, was steeped in a 1950s aesthetic, all low-slung ranch houses and subliminal resonances of Joseph Eichler’s sleek architectural designs.

“All those period references must have influenced me without realizing it,” she says. “Because when my husband, Steve, and I first saw this midcentury modern home in Albany, I said we just have to have it.”

The couple previously had lived in a Berkeley Craftsman bungalow, but they wanted to be in Albany for its schools and the convenience factor - shops and BART are a short walk from the house. The idea of unearthing the original midcentury vibe of the boxy home at 548 Madison St. was an added enticement.

It turned out they were the only ones to see the home’s appeal, however. “Nobody else put in a bid,” Malewicz said with a laugh. She said the drapes appeared to be permanently drawn on the living room’s floor-to-ceiling plate-glass windows. “I guess the previous owner didn’t like the idea of living in a fishbowl.”

Those windows now offer sweeping views of the Albany and Berkeley hills, from the UC Berkeley campus’ Campanile in the east to the rooftops of El Cerrito in the west. But removing a set of curtains was the easy part. Much hard work was invested in remodeling the house, which was designed by the little-known architect Milo J. Bianchi and built in 1960. The three-bedroom, two-bathroom home is shaped like the letter U wrapped around a central courtyard.

The remodel was done in three stages. First a new, more open-plan kitchen was installed. Next came a visit by a team from HGTV, the home and garden TV network, which overhauled the living area and gave it a mid-mod zing. Finally, landscape designer Andreas Flache dramatically transformed the backyard.

The kitchen area was opened up to the living room by cutting a large rectangular hole in the dividing wall. At the other end of the room, two new sets of sliding doors allow for seamless access to the patio and views of the back garden. Ikea cabinets and plywood floors painted and varnished to resemble period Marmoleum complete the picture.

East Bay color consultant Cass Morris opted to replace the home’s dingy exterior hue, which Malewicz describes as “Band-Aid color,” with a smart olive green, a classic period color, according to Morris. Inside, dyed brown shag carpet was pulled up and replaced with bamboo for the living area and hard-wearing Flor tiles in the hallway. The exposed ceiling beams were painted a deep graphite color, and one wall of the living room was transformed with a dramatic shade of lacquer red.

The call to HGTV was made after a friend enjoyed the experience of appearing on the network’s “Find Your Style” show. The program’s stylist, Karen McAloon, oversaw a makeover of the home’s central fireplace with a coat of light gray stain, and suggested several key pieces of furniture and accessories to tie the midcentury look together.

The final step was to transform the yard so it would harmonize with the newly minted home’s look. Flache, a Berkeley landscape designer, created a hardscape with built-in benches and walkways whose piece de resistance is a fountain that gently cascades over a cluster of stones. Papyrus, taro and horsetail plants complete the look.

There’s potential for a deck to be added at the top level of the garden, but at the moment the expanded exterior space suits the couple, who have two young children, just fine. On warm days they pull out an inflatable swimming pool and live the Californian indoor-outdoor lifestyle to the fullest.

“Good architecture changes the way you live,” says Malewicz. “After all the changes, the house draws you outside. And even when you’re inside you can see the sky from all the windows.”

The family is relocating to Cincinnati and has started looking for a new home there. Smitten by what Malewicz calls the “purist, livable” style of their Albany home, the couple are keen to find something similar when they move. “I hear there are some great midcentury modern tract homes in Ohio,” she says.

SCROLL DOWN THE PAGE TO SEE ALL ARTICLES IN THIS CATEGORY.

Financial Times, May 2, 2009

Elizabeth George is the author of many acclaimed novels of psychological suspense, including the Inspector Lynley mysteries, which have been adapted for television by the BBC. She won the Anthony award and Agatha award for Best First Novel in the US and received the Grand Prix de Littérature Policière in France. Although she is American, most of her books are set in England, a country she fell in love with as a teenager and continues to visit regularly. George lives on Whidbey Island, off the coast of Washington state, near Seattle, US.

How did you end up building a home on Whidbey Island?
My husband, a retired firefighter, and I had settled on the Pacific north-west as the place we wanted to live. We wanted to be near to an international airport, so I could get over to England without too much difficulty. We also looked mostly at islands and small towns. I had lived in Huntington Beach [near Los Angeles] for 34 years but I was never a real southern Californian. I’m not a beach girl and I like big weather. We didn’t intend to build a home but when our real-estate agent called us and described these 10 acres on a bluff above the water, close to the town of Langley, we bought it sight unseen. This was in 2002 and it was the day before we were getting married.

Did you have a dream home in mind?
I had no idea where people even began designing houses. I had never built a home before. So I made sure to find a one-stop-shop architect, one who would put in the level of detail I needed – not least because I was designing it from 1,200 miles away in California. I favoured a traditional Cape Cod style with a shingle exterior. I made a scrapbook for Jed Miller, my architect, full of clippings from architecture and interiors magazines. And I compiled a list of all the things I wanted, such as a self-contained office and a workout room. I found a picture of a house and sent it to him with a note that said: “There isn’t anything about this house that I don’t like.” That was the jumping-off point.

Describe the house.
It is positioned so that every room has a different view, whether it’s the water, Mt Baker or the North Cascades [national park]. The sitting area of my office has a huge round window and it looks straight up the passage to Coupeville, which is 28 miles away. In the front entry there isn’t a dramatic stairway as you might expect. Instead the stairs are hidden. There’s an upper gallery for my black-and-white portrait photographs and the lower gallery has many of our landscape pastels by local artists. We have an English cottage-style walled garden and a gazebo for barbecuing. I love showing guests the potting shed because they always ask whether it’s a guest house. I tell them it’s Jed’s idea of a garden shed. It’s beautiful.

What’s your favourite room?
The home’s one defining room is the library. The bookcases are custom-made of cherrywood and they line three of the four walls. But my favourite is the upstairs sitting room, part of the master suite. On cold, rainy days I love to sit there with a fire going, to read or take a nap.

How did you choose the decor?
I have worked with interior designers before and part of the problem with them, bless their hearts, is they always want to rush off to the design centre to buy $5,000 chairs. I worked with a sales person at a good furniture store in Seattle. We spent four months choosing all the furniture and fabrics. We bought all our Asian rugs in Newport Beach, California. When it came time to choose our wall colours, we unrolled them in an underground parking garage in Seattle. We set up daylight lights and chose all the colours for each room. I was really nervous about it but it worked. My natural inclination is towards autumnal tones but with the guest house, which we finished in December, we went for a totally different look with yellow, green and the accent of violet. It’s in the woods so I wanted something brighter.

What’s Whidbey Island like?
There are only 1,100 people in Langley. I didn’t realise until we moved here that it’s the centre of the Whidbey Island Writers’ Association. It has two theatres, two orchestras and a jazz festival. There’s also an annual arts festival. There are so many artists on the south part of the island that you can’t throw a stone without hitting a watercolourist or sculptor. This is a very social community and I’ve had more parties here than I ever had in 34 years in Huntington Beach. But it’s casual. This past summer I wanted to have a gathering so that people could really enjoy the gardens before the winter set in but I couldn’t face the idea of throwing a huge party so I had a BYOE (bring your own everything) party. People brought wine or a picnic. We had croquet and ping-pong. It was wonderful.

Do you have a writing routine?
I start work at 6am. At the moment I’m making changes to the third draft of my 16th novel. I will stop at 8am so that I can spend one hour studying Italian before my assistant arrives. If I’m working on the rough draft of a new novel, I’ll usually work until about 11am.

Do you have any future projects for the property?
We hope to get access to the beach in some way; whether it’s with a tram or stairs, I don’t know. We keep two small boats there. But it’s tough because you don’t want to compromise the bluff in any way. We are also restoring the forest on the property – replacing invasive plants like blackberries and sage ivy and putting in natives such as ferns and huckleberry.

Do you miss your home when you’re away?
Since moving, I’ve reduced my travelling because it’s so lovely here. If I travel, I miss something. And I mean literally miss something, not in a nostalgic way but in the sense that I might not be there for something important like the big storm.

MY FAVOURITE THINGS

Figurines and portraits

My collection of whimsical English pottery figurines . Some are animals but most have a function too; they might be a vase or a planter. They are all secured in case of an earthquake and are absolutely adorable.

A portrait of George Harrison, my favourite Beatle, that hangs in my office. I got it by chance in San Francisco. I like portraits that show what the person is really like. This reveals a great deal of sensitivity and there’s a haunted element about the eyes.

I collect black-and-white photographic portraits and I have one of César Chávez that I saw in a coffee house. I tracked the photographer down and asked if he had a copy he would sell me.

I have seven oil paintings by the Chinese-American artist Zhao Kailin. I came across him in a gallery in Laguna Beach, California.

Then there’s my collection of miniature paintings from England, mostly of women and probably from the early 19th century. People carried them before photographs.

SCROLL DOWN THE PAGE TO SEE ALL THE ARTICLES IN THIS CATEGORY.

San Francisco Chronicle, May 3, 2009

In the introduction to his 2006 book “NorCalMod,” author Pierluigi Serraino bemoaned the lack of attention paid to the Modernist architects of Northern California.

Why, he asked, has modernism been identified almost exclusively with Southern California? Why “in the books of memory (do) there appear only scattered traces of their accomplishments, tiles of mosaic left unfinished decades ago”? Serraino’s oeuvre went some way toward reinstating the reputations of those forgotten architects of the mid-20th century, including Beverley Thorne, Donald Olsen, Francis Joseph McCarthy and Henry Hill.

Also featured in the book, although not extensively, was Roger Yuen Lee, who designed 5 Krohn Lane in Oakland, which recently came on the market at $895,000, and now has a sale pending.

Lee, who died in 1981, designed more than 100 homes in California, mostly in the East Bay. A 1941 graduate of UC Berkeley’s architecture school, he was part of the Second Bay Area Tradition whose practitioners borrowed some of the ideals of predecessors like Bernard Maybeck and Julia Morgan, while giving their designs an unequivocally modern stamp.

Lee’s homes are characterized by their post and beam construction, low-slung aspect and generous use of glass.

And, in many ways, 5 Krohn Lane - a modest, 1,846-square-foot home - encapsulates much of what all those Modernist architects were striving to create: an open floor plan, an emphasis on indoor-outdoor living and a harmonious relationship with nature, both in terms of materials used and the homeowners’ interaction with the landscape.

Perched above Montclair so as to afford sweeping views of the bay, but within a few minutes’ walk of the village’s shops, the entrance to the three-bedroom, two-bathroom house is flanked by a carport to the left and a bank of landscaped rockery to the right. A stone pathway continues through the front door into the home itself. This isn’t the only way Lee has employed natural materials in the house. A majestic stone fireplace, which holds center stage in the living room, is set in a bed of smooth graphite-colored pebbles.

All the board and batten redwood walls, both on the exterior and interior of the house, are stained a light tone of gray. The gently cantilevered roof is accented with terracotta-hued paint - one of the current owners’ favorite shades.

Original photographs of the house, which was built in 1949, show that much of the original detailing remains. One addition is the kidney shaped swimming pool that was put in by one of the home’s early owners in lieu of a lawn. Full-length windows and sliding doors ensure that it, and the views beyond, dominate the vistas from most rooms in the house. A good lesson for the home’s future owner, however, is not to keep those panes too buffed: walking straight into a plane of sheer glass is a liability in houses where the line between indoor and outdoor is deliberately blurred.

Heating is supplied by a radiant under-floor system similar to that found in the homes of the better known mid-century architect Joseph Eichler. The kitchen features an authentic Thermador range and built-in toaster, as well as the original unfinished-style wood and cabinets which, like most of the closets in the house, are operated by a push-click mechanism. This ensures a streamlined look - and can also lead to initial confusion in locating actual storage space as opposed to a mere wall.

Also on the first floor are two bedrooms, one of which features a trademark Lee sliding door, and a bathroom. A short flight of open stairs, topped with a balcony, leads from the hallway to a master suite with original built-in drawers and closets. An en-suite shower is tucked around a corner but there is no door separating it from the bedroom. This would have been quite a risque proposition in 1949, even though today bathing in one’s open-plan bedroom seems to be all the rage.

In a 2003 Chronicle story on Lee, it was noted that homes designed by the architect come onto the market rarely. They are often passed down to family or friends, the article reported, and one owner in Orinda even spoke of keeping a waiting list of people who wanted to buy her house. Coincidentally, however, a Lee home sold last month in El Cerrito. Smaller than Krohn Lane, and without a pool, 557 Ashbury Ave. was listed at $625,000 on April 2 and sold just two weeks later.

It’s a fair guess that Krohn Lane will speak to fans of the mid-century modern aesthetic, whose numbers appear to be swelling if the growing selection of books, articles and blogs about the period is anything to go by. But there’s a pleasing feel to this house, which most potential home buyers, whatever their design preferences, are likely to sense when they walk through the door.

Lee belonged to a generation of architects who designed affordable custom-built modern homes for middle- and even working-class people. According to Thorne, his one-time colleague, he was “known for taking budgets that were impossible and making something out of them.” Lee could reportedly build for $8 to $9 per square foot. He also favored smaller homes, simple and functional but distinctive and designed with flair. In these hard economic times, these are all concepts which should prove particularly appealing.

San Francisco Chronicle, April 12, 2009

It’s every architect’s nightmare: You have painstakingly produced the blueprints for a beautiful custom-build contemporary home, then the client pulls out of the project for lack of funds, the site is sold and suddenly your designs are in the hands of a builder you have never met before.

Your lovingly conceived dream home - with your trademark razor-sharp lines and oodles of natural light - has turned into a spec home on paper with your name attached to it but potentially no control over how it’s built.

These may well have been the thoughts that crossed the mind of noted Bay Area architect Robert Swatt when builder Glenn Macomber called him to talk about building the home Swatt had been commissioned to design on a site at 6201 Westwood Way in Montclair, Oakland.

His fears were assuaged and the story has a happy ending because Macomber had decided he wanted to honor the original vision as closely as possible.

“Some builders might have chosen to ‘value-engineer’ the build - cut a few corners to save money,” Macomber says now, 18 months after his first conversation with Swatt and after putting the finishing touches to the four-bedroom, 3 1/2-bath home that is now for sale. “But Bob Swatt is an award-winning architect and I wanted to stay true to his design.”

Swatt’s relief over how things turned out is palpable. “I admit I was concerned that whoever took on the home might choose to build it kinda like my plans but then put in goofy windows and sloped roofs. But Glenn was committed to doing it right.”

The biggest challenge to building the home was the site, which was triangular, sloped in two directions and covered in trees. “If you’d passed by a couple of years ago, you wouldn’t have even thought it was a vacant lot,” says Swatt.

Swatt has experience building on difficult sites, however. Many of his early homes were in the Berkeley/Oakland hills - four of them, in fact, were destroyed in the Oakland fires of 1991.

The house was designed on three gentle levels and, thanks to a significant amount of excavation, now tucks neatly into its location, with much of its bulk hidden from view. Indeed, at first glance you might mistake the low-slung, flat-roofed structure for a one-story home.

Aside from its sleek horizontal silhouette, the other aspect of the house that is immediately apparent from the street is the unstinting use of wood on its exterior. It is clad in clear western cedar tongue-and-groove siding, and the entry deck is made of Ipe Brazilian hardwood. The other few homes on Westwood Way, a private cul-de-sac, also are relatively new but Cape Cod traditional in style.

The front door leads directly into the home’s great room. Here a generous kitchen with Kitchen Craft cabinets, two Thermador double ovens and a stainless steel Kohler prep sink is elevated in line with Swatt’s preference for differentiating spaces with changes of levels and materials, rather than the use of doors or walls.

The focal point of the open-plan living room is the hearth and fireplace designed with a seamless swathe of deep gray CaesarStone - the same material used for the kitchen countertops - topped with a tubular, clear-anodized, aluminum flue cover. Sliding French doors lead onto one of the home’s two decks, this one offering views across the wooded back hills of Montclair.

First floor impressions

Most people visiting the house for the first time ask about the striking chandeliers in the living area, which consist of two clusters of glass globes reminiscent of outsize rain droplets. They, and some of the sconces in the house, are made by Canadian manufacturer Bocci.

Also on the first floor are two bedrooms and one of the home’s three bathrooms. Rather than try for a different look in each of them, Macomber says he deliberately chose from a limited palette of tile to create a harmonious effect.

“It’s always tempting to show off your creativity in the bathrooms, but I like the look and feel to stay the same,” he says.

The master bathroom, which is one level down, features a large, cast-iron Kohler tub and a double mosaic-tiled shower. Next door, a small deck leads off the master bedroom, with more leafy views.

Macomber admits there were times, when perusing the blueprints, when he felt tempted to bypass some of Swatt’s more exacting decrees. The fact that the eventual sales value of the house was bound to be affected by an economy that was rapidly heading southward was an additional incentive to take short cuts.

Top-line finish

But he stuck with the plans, going for the top-line finishes and high-end materials. Hence the home’s multitude openings to the exterior, including clerestory windows on the first floor, several pairs of sliding Fleetwood doors and skylights in the powder room, all of which let in an abundance of natural light.

There were a few areas where Macomber deviated from the original designs. A garage was built in place of a carport, and a windowless home theater planned for the lowest level of the house is a bright room with views that could be used as a bedroom or family room. In both cases, Swatt gave the revisions his seal of approval.

In all, the home feels more spacious than its 2,853 square feet, a result no doubt of its layered design, white-painted walls and a certain lightness of touch. The garden space is minimal and steeply graded, although the ample decks allow for the indoor-outdoor lifestyle this house calls for.

“I like to think of it being a carefree home in that its owners won’t have to spend much time on maintaining the yard,”  says Swatt. Then he adds: “Really it came out surprisingly nicely.”