Tracey Taylor

San Francisco Chronicle, January 17 2010

Photos: Matthew Millman

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

San Francisco Chronicle, January 13 2010

Photos: Russell Yip/The Chronicle

Who says tech whiz kids don’t have a design sensibility? When Twitter recently moved into its new offices in downtown San Francisco, many of the bright young things who work there were concerned about the decor on their walls. Specifically, they were insistent that a series of cloud decals that had adorned their previous work space - a throwback to an early Twitter logo - should accompany them to their new work space.

Fortunately for them, Sara Morishige Williams, the designer assigned to give the new offices a makeover, and the wife of Twitter co-founder Evan Williams, was more than aware of what was called for, having lived and breathed the Twitter culture since the company started in 2007.

Before anything, however, she had to find offices to accommodate the rapidly expanding team, whose number currently stands at 110 but, given the success of the company’s microblogging service, is likely to grow. Morishige Williams, who has worked on residential interiors but was new to a workplace project, toured a number of spaces that were up for sublease, many of them empty.

Eventually she found sixth-floor offices that had previously been occupied by social-networking site Bebo. A key attraction was that the space had been built out by Brereton Architects a few years ago, which meant Morishige Williams could concentrate on the interiors, as the unit didn’t require any structural changes.

Morishige Williams’ priorities when considering how to give the new space the Twitter imprint revolved around three key issues: familiarity, levity and sustainability.

“Twitter is under an intense spotlight despite being a very young company, but it stays grounded with a culture of humility, empathy and compassion,” she says. “People there care about sustainability and are involved in global issues, so I was careful to take this into consideration with my design and material choices.”

Reception desk re-clad

Morishige Williams says she chose furniture and fittings that would endure, be minimalist and, wherever possible, reuse materials. She started in the vast lobby area by deciding to retain the sweeping reception desk, but give it a new look by having its base re-clad with reclaimed barn wood. She collaborated on this, and several other elements in the work space, with Mark Rogero at Oakland’s Concreteworks. The large Twitter sign on one of the walls in the lobby is made from the same reclaimed barn wood and hot-rolled steel and was fabricated by Lundberg Design.

The lobby also introduces the playful element Morishige Williams was striving for throughout the space. A pair of neon-green deer take pride of place in a corner bay whose giant windows provide stunning views of Yerba Buena Gardens. The animals were garden ornaments when Morishige Williams found them, and somewhat the worse for wear. She repaired and painted them - fixing a pair of real antlers onto one - and the duo accompanied the Twitter team from their former offices. The reception area also features a wall of tree-branch hooks made by John Robohm at Live Wire Farm.

In the open-plan offices themselves, the immediate impression is of natural light and space - neither of which one associates with your typical urban work space. Close inspection reveals a plethora of whimsical design touches - almost all of which have been inspired by nature and the company’s own visual branding.

“I wanted the space to be personal, not unlike a home,” says Morishige Williams. “And I wanted to bring the outdoors in.”

Thus, each of the company’s conference rooms has been named after a bird, and an aluminum cutout of the bird’s silhouette - be it a heron, a skylark or a plover - has been placed on the respective doors.

Concreteworks was commissioned to make another important element for the new space: four outsize conference tables. These were crafted in concrete composed of recycled aggregates, including 40 percent fly ash, and their bases were also clad in barn wood. The piece de resistance is the main conference room’s table, the top inlaid with a scattering of Twitter’s signature bird motifs cut out of white opaque acrylic. Each of the meeting rooms is equipped with extra large whiteboards, because, says Morishige Williams, “everybody here is really into whiteboards.”

The avian theme is repeated on the office’s longest wall, for which Morishige Williams designed a sweep of birds created with custom-made decals. The design was based on a photograph Morishige Williams took of a flock of birds when visiting her father-in-law in snowy Nebraska.

Morishige Williams says she was fortunate that the space’s existing carpet, a striped prism pattern on a black background, was nice enough to keep. She matched colors in the carpet for the walls, which were painted in low-VOC paints. The tones range from robin’s-egg blue to icy green. To create contrast, one wall has been painted dark gray.

Focus on comfort

“In the design of Twitter’s space, I wanted community spaces to have elements of a comfortable living room, where people could escape their desks yet continue working,” says Morishige Williams. With this in mind, many areas in the Twitter headquarters have been given over to comfortable seating.

Morishige Williams chose furniture that, while stylish, was also functional and offered value for money. All the meeting-room chairs are recyclable and stackable. The chairs used in the dining area are the Jake model from Room & Board. As well as in-house lunch, Twitter employees are offered regular teatimes. “Google has its TGIF get-togethers - we have tea,” says Morishige Williams.

Many of the sofas were custom-made by San Francisco company Furniture Envy, which will make pieces to order. Close to the DJ booth that the company inherited sits a row of Chiquita stools by Kenneth Cobonpue. With their seats made of natural rattan poles, they are visually striking but surprisingly comfortable.

Time was in short supply for Morishige Williams, both because the move happened quickly and because it coincided with the birth of her first child. One aspect she knew would make a significant impact was lighting, so she tackled that early on, switching out unattractive fixtures in favor of pendants and shades that cast a warm glow. It proved a relatively easy way to make the space more inviting.

But her finishing touch is perhaps the most telling. In order to make the staff feel welcome in the new work environment, Morishige Williams commissioned small Throwboy pillows for each employee, which were placed on their chairs on their first day in the new offices. Embroidered on each are the words “Home Tweet Home.”

“Sara has successfully translated the essential qualities of Twitter,” says Twitter co-founder Biz Stone. “There is a deep acknowledgment of openness in the layout, and crafty nods toward thinking green with the use of reclaimed barn wood and concrete tabletops made of recycled glass. Technology is driven by nature, by people pushing it in clever new directions, and Sara gets that. …

“The space we occupy in San Francisco is where we hope to do our best work. Sara’s instinct and attention to detail helps inspire us to do just that.”

San Francisco Chronicle, January 3 2010

Photo: Leger Wanaselja Architecture

Maybe it’s the gate made entirely from silver Volvo station wagon doors. Or the doorway awnings, which, in a former life, were hatchbacks on Porsches and Mazdas. Or the white picket fence - it’s made out of green and white road signs, as are railings for the home’s stairs and its light fixtures.

If you’ve cruised the corner of Martin Luther King Jr. Way and Dwight Way in Berkeley, you’ve seen this home. It’s hard to miss. At a minimum, this nine-unit condo development is an attention-grabber.

These repurposed street signs and car parts were intended to add levity and intrigue to the home’s visual landscape. They also helped to add buzz. As soon as the project was completed in February 2004, curious residents and architectural critics alike wanted a peek.

More than 500 people turned up to the property’s first open house, according to Cate Leger, a principal at Berkeley architecture firm Leger Wanaselja, which designed and built the condos.

It turns out the eye-catching sustainable elements visible from the street are just the tip of the iceberg. These units are green to their core, featuring everything from passive solar power systems to recycled glass terrazzo kitchen counters. This becomes clear when one takes a tour of the now for sale second-floor condo at 2474 Martin Luther King Jr. Way, currently priced at $520,000.

Vu Nguyen became the unit’s second owner when he bought the two-bedroom, two-bathroom condo in 2006. Nguyen visited 114 open houses before finding this home - he kept count using a database. But here, he was smitten.

“Nothing compares,” Nguyen said. “I was immediately drawn to the 10-foot ceilings, all the natural light and the loft-like feel of the place,” adding that he preferred the open feel of the lower floor, including the fact that the second bedroom and bathroom are located there, allowing for clear separation and privacy for his roommate.

Ironically, given the building’s impeccable green credentials, Nguyen’s first impressions did not relate to sustainability. But it didn’t take long for him to appreciate the home’s attention to eco-friendly details - most notably a $30 monthly heating bill. Nguyen was also impressed by the quality of the condo’s finishes, particularly the solid construction interior doors.

The condo features polished concrete floors, off-white plaster walls and cream carpeting on the stairs. The kitchen, with its counters, doors and sills handcrafted from salvaged wood and recycled glass, takes up a corner of the living area. The back bedroom/office has personality, featuring slanted half walls and a deep, angular bay window. The full bathroom boasts salvaged glass shelves.

A large skylight is positioned at the top of the two-tone wood and steel staircase and provides lots of natural light as well as natural ventilation. A good-size, low-maintenance deck with views of the East Bay hills and the bay leads off the master bedroom, which also has a full in-suite bathroom.

Nguyen, who is moving so he can accommodate his parents in a larger home, has grown to love some of the home’s finer details, such as the gently tapered, smooth wooden post in his main living and kitchen area, which was fashioned from a tree on the site, and a small alcove with a hefty shelf made of reclaimed wood.

The gated units were built on an infill site, requiring the remodeling of a turn-of-the-century corner store and the new construction of a mixed-use building next door.

Leger said she and Karl Wanaselja, her husband and partner at Leger Wanaselja, had noble ambitions when they designed the residences. Their goal was to use time-tested methods to minimize energy use and to rely heavily on salvaged, recycled and low-toxic finishes. A total of 3 1/2 tons of street signs were used inside and outside the buildings. “We are very proud of this project,” she said. “It’s a great example of green architecture.”

Other measures that contribute to reducing the condo’s environmental impact include the use of blown-in cellulose insulation (made from old telephone books and newspapers) instead of fiberglass, and substituting 50 percent of the cement in the concrete with fly ash (a byproduct of coal burning).

The building won a slew of awards and was featured in Dwell magazine, which quipped, “With its overtly green approach, it seems a perfect architectural summation of [Berkeley's] values.”

New York Times, December 26, 2009

Novella Carpenter is a writer, urban farmer and Dumpster diver. Her memoir, “Farm City: The Education of an Urban Farmer,” chronicles her life on her small homestead near downtown Oakland. Ms. Carpenter, who studied journalism under Michael Pollan at theUniversity of California, Berkeley, also helps run a biodiesel station in Berkeley, where she teaches chicken and rabbit rearing classes. She is working on her second book. (Her words have been edited and condensed).

Photo: Josh Haner, New York Times.

UP WITH THE CHICKENS I get up at 7:30 to feed the chickens who gather on my back stairs and make a racket. Then I milk my goat, Bebe, while listening to NPR. All the days seem about the same. I do not have a weekend-centric, T.G.I.F. lifestyle.

PICK-ME-UP I drink a very strong cup of Lapsang Souchong, a smoky black tea. I call it bacon tea. I’m sure I’ll end up getting cancer from drinking it: they make it by roasting tea leaves over burning pine. I drink it with honey from my bees and goat milk from Bebe. I eat later — some figs from the tree, or some tomatoes, maybe a big salad from the garden.

MANUAL LABOR I do farm chores: milking, checking on the rabbits, collecting a few eggs from the chickens. They don’t lay as much as they used to. I need to cull them, but they are so old they are just not appetizing. Sometimes I’ll go to my office in Oakland and write. Sometimes I have a lot of farm work. The big chores are mucking out the goat yard, which can get really smelly. I’m often making something like cheese or sauerkraut, so I have to flip the cheese or change the brine water for any olives I’m curing.

EXPEDITIONS Bill, my partner, and I might plan a seasonal activity like olive picking in Davis, strawberry picking or tomato harvesting. Or we might go sailing or just have a picnic on Bill’s totally grubby boat. It’s a 21-foot sailboat that one of his customers gave him. It’s fun to sit on while the sun goes down.

DIVING FOR DINNER At night, Bill and I will often go into San Francisco to see a movie at the Red Vic or eat at our favorite Indian place, Shalimar in the Tenderloin. The real reason for going to San Francisco, though, is Rainbow Grocery. Sometimes we shop there, but mostly we wait until the store closes and the Dumpster comes out. We’re mostly there for the animals: the goats love the cabbage leaves, the bunnies love the bruised apples and fennel stalks. But we often find stuff for us to eat, too, like yogurt or bananas. Rainbow is great because they put the good, edible stuff in boxes within the Dumpster, so it’s easy to find and doesn’t get dirty.

A BOOK AND BED I go to bed around 11 or 12. I usually read in bed until I fall asleep.