Tracey Taylor

Financial Times, November 21, 2009

Photos: Tracey Taylor

Shortly after Jane Martin ripped up part of the concrete pavement in front of her home in San Francisco’s Mission District and planted a small garden, a police cruiser drove by and the officer leaned out of the window. “I give you two weeks before one of your windows is broken,” he said, pointing at the small river rocks Martin had used to cover the plant bed.

Her windows remained intact, however, and her garden thrived. In fact it attracted the attention of the local community and passers-by for positive reasons. People stopped to chat when she was out weeding and several neighbours asked her how they might go about planting their own front-of-house gardens.

Indeed this modest patch of succulents, evergreens and native flowers in one of the city’s densest neighbourhoods became the launch-pad for an ambitious greening project that has seen significant expanses of pavement replaced with gardens across San Francisco.

Martin, a landscape architect with her own practice, Shift Design Studio, had turned bare paving into an oasis of urban greenery before. A year or so earlier she effected a similar transformation on a 14ft-deep pavement in front of her former studio on Shotwell Street, a few blocks north of her current home. Fed up with the cavalier attitude taken by drivers who mounted the curb to overtake or even to park right outside her window, she decided to take action. “I was almost run over three times when stepping out of my door,” she says.

In San Francisco pavements are city property but it is the responsibility of the adjacent property owner to maintain the area directly in front of their homes. Martin soon discovered, however, that making any significant changes to the paving involved negotiating a complex web of red tape. “I persevered but I wouldn’t recommend going through that process to anyone else. It was onerous,” she says.

Then a problem in her neighbourhood’s combined sewer system proved serendipitous. It led the city’s mayor, Gavin Newsom, to see the advantages of introducing more permeable landscaping: the logic being that the more rain that goes into the ground, the less likely it is that sewers will become over-capacitated. With the support of the mayor’s office, Martin drafted a new, simple permit that allows residents to apply to landscape their pavements for a reasonable cost. The maximum one-off fee is $215 but this decreases to $160 when several households band together.

Lisa Zahner decided to do something about her rubbish-strewn pavement after picking up one discarded drinks can too many in front of her San Francisco home. Zahner lives on a busy street close to Alamo Square, a popular tourist destination due to its collection of Victorian “Painted Lady” houses. Her pavement was commandeered by pedestrians, dog walkers and cyclists and people stopping by at the bodega on the corner would routinely leave a trail of litter outside her front door.

Before she began the project Zahner asked her neighbours whether she could plant some of the space in front of their properties and offered to pay for the work herself. Several decided to get involved and the result was 65ft of landscaping and two extra tree wells on the street corner.

Zahner admits the plan stalled when the estimate for pulling up the 100-year-old paving came in. “It was more than $2,000,” she recalls. “I phoned my husband to see what he thought and he said: ‘What we put out in cash we will recoup in goodwill’. He was right. The response has been overwhelmingly positive.”

Although she originally envisaged a sea of wildflowers, these didn’t take well and the bed outside Zahner’s home is now a profusion of hardy, native plants that need little watering. There are Douglas Irises, various grasses, daisies, yarrows and a huge Acacia tree. “I love looking out of the window and seeing plants and grasses rather than concrete,” says Zahner. “But it’s more than that. We’ve got to know many more people – neighbours, regular dog-walkers and others who just stop to talk about the flowers.”

As a near-neighbour of Martin’s in the Mission, Anne Wintroub found inspiration close at hand and she helped orchestrate a community planting project that brought together 20 local homeowners. Martin helped to mentor the group but insisted that the participants should do the lion’s share of the work. “We spent evenings together working on the permit, choosing plants and applying for a grant to help fund it all,” says Wintroub. “The co-ordinated approach paid off because we had real buy-in from everyone involved.”

Today half of Wintroub’s block boasts drought-tolerant pavement landscaping and she says the effects have been palpable. The garage door that used to be a graffiti canvas has remained untarnished for months and neighbours who met while working on the planting keep an eye out for one another. “This has made people much more respectful of the neighbourhood,” she says.

There have been more than 500 applications from San Franciscans to turn paving into micro-gardens in the three years since Martin helped usher in the new sidewalk landscaping permit. Martin has also launched PlantSF a volunteer body to help promote permeable landscaping in the city. The many residential projects have been mirrored on public spaces such as traffic islands and street meridians with the help of initiatives such as the city-backed Pavements to Parks organisation. Martin estimates that in the past five years more than 15,000 sq ft of concrete along pavement and street meridians have been converted into sustainable gardens.

This greening of the urban landscape has proved beneficial on many levels, as well as the obvious aesthetic one. It has brought a sense of community into areas where neighbours might not have known each other before; the permeable landscaping creates a habitat for birds, butterflies and other wildlife; it reduces global warming by absorbing heat rather than reflecting it; anecdotal evidence suggests it has helped reduce crime; and local estate agents say the gardens are helping to boost property values.

Martin’s own pavement garden on Harrison Street has expanded to include a bulb of paving that juts out on the corner of her street as a traffic calming measure. Previously a magnet for the illegal dumping of old furniture and garbage, it is now a beautiful small park where locals such as Carlos Lopez, who has lived in the Mission for more than 20 years, stop by to pull out some weeds or sit on one of the built-in benches to chat to neighbours.

The planting includes purple Hibiscus, sage, lavender, Torch lilies and Californian poppies, which attract bumble bees and hummingbirds. “It was design by potluck,” Martin says. “Over time people have brought cuttings or flowers from their own gardens.” In one planter someone has hung a couple of translucent baubles that catch the sun in the breeze. Half embedded in the soil nearby is a toy dinosaur.

For Martin, whose mother was a gardener and who grew up with a large garden in suburban Iowa, this is how it should be. “I see the earth as potential. And it seems strange to me to seal off all that potential under concrete,” she says.

New York Times, November 13 2009

If you live in the Bay Area, you hardly need reminding that you pay more for your home than most people. The region has the dubious honor of ranking No. 1 nationally in median home value, median monthly mortgage costs and median gross rent.

PRICE The median price paid for a Bay Area home is $365,000, compared with $177,900 nationally. That regional median price peaked at $665,000 in June 2007.

The Urban Land Institute’s new Bay Area Burden report offers more of the figures behind the general sense of being overstretched: almost 20 percent of all Bay Area homeowners spend more than half of their income on housing — far exceeding the national average of 12 percent.

On average, these households spend more than $28,000 annually on housing — about 39 percent of the area median income, the report said. Three-fifths of local residents live in communities unaffordable to households earning less than $80,000 a year.

SALES New sales figures show an increase in the area’s two biggest urban concentrations, at a time of year when one would expect a dip. The number of existing single family homes sold in San Jose in the month ended Oct. 15 was 764, up 12 percent from that period in 2008, according to MDA DataQuick. In San Francisco, there was an 18.5 percent jump with 282 sales.

Even in Oakland, where one expects less buoyancy, existing home sales slipped just 3.5 percent, to 276 from 286, according to DataQuick’s analysis.

Low interest rates as well as lower prices help explain the strong numbers.

In more hard-hit communities, government assistance has helped increase home sales, particularly among first-time buyers. Lending on about half of all homes bought in Martinez (51.2 percent), Brentwood (50.6 percent) and Antioch (50.3 percent) is insured by the Federal Housing Administration. In Oakley, it is 65 percent.

FORECLOSURES The foreclosure statistics tell another story, and the most notable trend is a discernible increase in the number of distressed homes at the higher end of the market. In San Francisco, where the median home price is $650,000 (compared with $365,000 for the Bay Area as a whole), there has been a significant rise in the number of default notices: 180 in the month ended Oct. 15, compared with 34 in the same period last year. Mountain View, Palo Alto and Danville have also had sharp rises in defaults.

A major cause is the resetting of “exotic” mortgages, those with low upfront interest rates. Plunging home values, and reduced availability of the jumbo mortgages, which make refinancing possible, have left many high-end homeowners facing significant monthly payment increases.

San Francisco Chronicle, November 8 2009

Photos: Mike Kepka/The Chronicle

Unlike the architect whose house has a perpetually leaking roof, or the cobbler whose shoes need mending, Michael Pollan has a new garden that speaks of a professional who practices what he preaches. For the author and journalism professor - who has almost single-handedly set the national agenda on food production and, in books such as “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” and “In Defense of Food,” advocated vigorously for fresh, locally produced food - has a front yard that is at once pleasing to the eye, environmentally responsible and very productive.

When Pollan and his wife, artist Judith Belzer, moved to a new home in Berkeley three years ago, they inherited a garden with good intentions but flawed execution. Sited in front of the house, and measuring barely 600 square feet, its design had attempted to accommodate five separate gates leading variously to the street, the driveway, a bike shelter and a side entrance.

Although a kidney-shaped plant bed had been established, the principal element was a curved pathway that swept visitors in and then directly out of the yard, largely ignoring both the generous front porch entrance to the home and the French doors leading into what is now a beautifully renovated kitchen.

“Circulation was definitely an issue,” says Pollan, who adds that the area is also heavily trafficked. “It was important that we had a kitchen garden, but we also wanted it to be beautiful - it’s where guests come in, and we walk through it all the time to take out the trash or compost.”

While the family hoped the modest, fenced-in yard could serve as a place for social gatherings, there were to be no airs and graces. Belzer in particular stressed that the area should not be too stylized - rather she favored a lush but relaxed setting where the couple, their teenage son and their friends would want to spend a lot of time.

Conceding that it was a tall order, the couple asked Bernardo Lopez, a Berkeley landscape designer who has earned a reputation for good-looking gardens that do more than nod to environmental concerns, to rethink the space.

Lopez began by imposing some structure on the hexagonal-shaped space to delineate areas by function and to improve the garden’s flow. A black basalt stone patio, edged in a crescent of Cor-Ten steel, was laid adjacent to the kitchen to create an outdoor eating area. An existing cement wall was used to anchor a deep recycled redwood bench that provides additional opportunities for sitting or lounging.

Steps from the patio lead down into a courtyard, at the heart of which are three beautiful raised beds crafted in Ipe wood and currently bursting with late-season produce. Sand-colored pathways created with crushed decomposed granite, and edged in steel, lead visitors seamlessly around the beds to the home’s different entrances.

A bench for bags

For those arriving from the driveway, perhaps with groceries, a second redwood bench has been judiciously sited in a spot that provides a convenient place to put down heavy bags. It also creates a naturally demarcated route to the kitchen.

On a late-autumn day, the beds are filled with bountiful peppers, tomatoes, zucchini, chard, kale, mustard greens, broccoli, spinach, romaine lettuce and arugula. Lopez says that over the summer, sunflowers and sweet corn plants soared to dizzying heights, as if in competition to reach the sky.

Herbs sown in planters supplement those growing in the beds and include basil, parsley and cilantro. Pots of mint, lemon verbena and lemon balm have been placed close to the house for easy access when preparing teas and infusions.

The raised beds have been designed to double as seating, and they surround a central circular space whose centerpiece is a large antique Indian cooking vessel, which Lopez and Pollan bought on a shopping spree in Sonoma. Pollan says they regularly grill food outside now. In fact, he is planning to cook a suckling pig there when a friend and fellow writer comes to town in a couple of weeks. He is also exploring having a rotisserie element tailor-made to augment his chef’s arsenal.

Lopez has planted every remaining square foot of the yard with a generous assortment of beautiful, drought-resistant plants. “It was a given we wanted to preserve water, and we chose Bernardo partly because he understands xeriscaping so well,” Pollan says.

There are succulents, many of them South African in origin, and several varieties of grasses. Lopez uses repetition in the plants and materials he chooses. He says, it helps to create a dialogue in a garden and convey a sense of cohesiveness.

Stylish in winter, too

He also has an eye for plants that look good year round. “Flowers can come and go in a few weeks,” he says. “But there are many plants whose shapes, leaves and coloring are stunning in their own right.”

A few of the garden’s highlights include a chartreuse gooseberry hybrid, Senecio mandraliscae with its distinctive curved finger-like leaves, a Melianthus major with its spiked reddish-brown blooms and lime-hued foliage, several types of Leucadendrons, some saw-tooth-edged Banksias, Eryngium giganteum, or sea holly, from the thistle family and a fleshy Kalanchoe whose home is a striking Cor-Ten steel planter.

Lopez showed the same appreciation for the architecture of plants in the way he pruned back the foliage on the lower trunks of two existing climbing plants: a South African honeysuckle that wraps itself languorously over one of the garden’s Craftsman-style trellises; and a lovely wisteria that adorns the home’s facade. He took out a rampant climbing passion flower on the principle that, sometimes, “less is more.”

The yard already boasted persimmon and fig trees, and Lopez added an apricot tree that is espaliered in front of a window to provide shade and privacy.

The overall palette is subtle: a blend of silvers and salmons, sages and gray-greens with the occasional shot of muted color such as the icy pink artichoke-like flowers on an exotic-looking protea.

“Design is not a nonstop train. We added some elements as we worked and got to know the garden,” says Lopez, who introduced some space that wasn’t on the original blueprint to ensure the courtyard didn’t feel crowded.

The result has exceeded all of Pollan and Belzer’s expectations. “We love spending time there,” Pollan says. “And when we have parties, guests always want to linger in the garden - we can’t persuade them to come inside. We couldn’t be happier.”

The San Francisco Chronicle, October 25, 2009

Photos by Mark Raymond Loustau

The beautifully sited mid-century modern home at 19 Belvedere Ave. on the island of Belvedere has twice been given a second chance.

First off in 1957 when the house, newly built by architect Henrik Bull for his friend Peter Klaussen, looked like it would miss being awarded a prize by Sunset Magazine. Fortunately for Bull, Charles Eames was on the jury and liked what he saw.

In his book, “NorCalMod: Icons of Northern Californian Modernism,” Pierluigi Serraino writes that the now-famous designer pulled the plan from the rejection pile. The house, which is built on stilts and commands stunning views of the San Francisco Bay, received an Honor Award from the trendsetting monthly.

More recently, the home was saved when real-estate broker Mark Raymond Loustau decided to buy the property and restore it rather than see it torn down.

Working with local architect Hank Bruce, Loustau has strived to retain as much of the original feel of the structure, one of Bull’s earliest residential projects.

A Bay Tradition modernist whose work tends toward the woodsy and is invariably tied to the outdoors, Bull’s best-known building is probably the Inn at Spanish Bay in Pebble Beach. He also designed many stylish ski cabins in the Sierra Nevada.

“Above all I wanted the home to be a space to frame the views,” says Loustau, who says that on a clear day the vista stretches from Fort Mason to Mount Tam.

Entrance to the home is via a glass gate and deck made of old-growth redwood. The open-plan living and dining area includes a sky-lit foyer, dark-stain oak floors and full-height glass doors leading onto a large, west-facing deck. The original concrete-block fireplace has been, as Loustau puts it, “excavated” after layers of white painted brick were removed.

Many other renovations done to the home in the 1980s have been peeled away, including shabby white wall-to-wall carpeting, a dilapidated carport, a limestone bar and a French Provencal-style kitchen with tan tile floor and countertops whose design obliterated most of the Bay views.

The sleek new kitchen offers unhindered vistas and features black honed Zimbabwe granite “infinity” counters, cherry-espresso cabinets, custom REZEK lighting and appliances from SubZero, Dacor and Viking. The spaces have been styled by interior designer Jhoanne Loubé, principal of the design and staging firm, Stage.

At night, Loustau says, when standing on the deck looking out to the water, it can feel as though one is floating on an ocean liner.

Stairs and an elevator lead to a lower level that has the bedrooms and additional outside space. With its fully tiled sunken bath, the bathroom that leads off the master suite is a sight to behold.

Next to the bedroom is also what may be the home’s piece de resistance: a Lanai-style deck tucked into the hillside and cooled by trees and foliage. This meditative spot also affords the most glorious views.

The 10,000-square-foot lot includes a pond, patio and many mature trees anchored around a 300-year-old Miwok oak.

Belvedere is less than 1 square mile, surrounded on three sides by water. Its 1,000 or so inhabitants are concentrated in three neighborhoods: Belvedere Island, Belvedere Lagoon and Corinthian Island.

The city is completely built out with single-family homes and approximately 100 rental units. The terrain is predominantly hilly and lush; many residences were designed by famous architects or are considered historically significant.

During the home’s remodeling in 2006, Bull visited the house and signed Loustau’s copy of the NorCalMod book in which the home is mentioned. Bull wrote: “Thank you for rescuing my first award-winning design. Good luck with the work of restoration and additions.”

New York Times, November 1, 2009

Photo of Rob Forbes by Heidi Schumann for The New York Times

For Rob Forbes, a San Francisco designer who was the founder of the furniture company Design Within Reach, South Park in San Francisco encapsulates his evolving feelings about the ways humans use the space around them, with both purpose and serendipity. He chose to locate his new venture, Studio Forbes, on the leafy, oval-shaped park because, he said, he had never made a traditional separation between work and play and one of his greatest pleasures was people-watching. (His words have been edited and condensed.)

INSPIRATION I call the park, which is a magnet for creative businesses, a civil demonstration of democracy because of its mix of architects, homeless people, art patrons, bikers and tattooed kids.

HUMAN SCALE When I heard they were calling the documentary on national parks “America’s Best Idea,” I thought, Give me a break. But, actually, it’s true: public spaces that people actually use are the acid test of democracy. This park puts me in my place.

DOING LUNCH I have meetings at the park tables. The studio has open-plan offices so, ironically, we come to a public park for privacy. I just designed a bike bell there with the designers Pablo Pardo and Oliver DiCicco. I can’t say I’m on the youthful side — I don’t use the swings. But I like how authentic the park’s restaurants are.

STYLE COUNSEL The park’s design is quirky, full of funny shapes that would drive a modernist mad, like the masonry pathways that evolved organically. I’m not nostalgic about the past, but I love that this place has the best parts of tradition.

EAVESDROPPING There was an intensity about the park during the dot-com boom. It’s still a place where people are making stuff happen. But no one is boasting about it. This, right here, is the ballet of the sidewalks that Jane Jacobs talked about.