A High Home
This Home in the heart of the City commands a spectacular view of the sweeping bay, framed by San Francisco’s seven hills. The Original early period home was very closed in, and chopped up inside, with low windows and an oppressively hierarchical circulation (borrowing from the hegemony of bygone servant eras) – unbecoming of such an opportune site in the northern California Climate so INTERSTICE was hired to transform the home in collaboration with its enlightened new owners.
Metamorphosis of Space
Its lower floor was a buried basement and unused space that further called for a total landscape and architectural reconfiguration: bedrooms were added, bathrooms and all the floors were gutted to start over. A vast seismic overhaul allowed us to open up the structure to create a flowing “Raumplan” that tied the sunny rear South-West paseo entry and new patio sitting areas into the kitchen, all the way through to the 70 mm Dolby-Stereo view to the North West across dining and living rooms all connected to the vista.
A Tower of Sunlight
A new central stair was carved from the side of the structure. Clad in fluted channel glass ‘beams’ it creates a vertical sculpture of a solid wood monolith spiraling through a tower of light from the roof deck into the wine cellar and cozy sitting rooms that share the lower private family garden level. Bathrooms with Italian floor-to-ceiling single porcelain sheet tiles, and European solid wide plank floors, help to simplify surfaces, and allow the rooms to breathe in light and float on the soft warmth of natural materials on all three levels.
A Garden Lot
The Garden wraps the home in this generous lot and connects through large French doors to the lower level connecting bedrooms and family rec-rooms to the exterior play area at the lowest level where the hanging glass droplets of light end their cascade from the rooftop atrium down through pine of the new modern home.
