Experimenting Spaces for Work & Play 

Located in the diverse Mission District of San Francisco, the MISSION:House is a two-story hybrid residence. The street level is a multi-purpose space that serves as an ad hoc creative space for the family (architect, landscape architect, and two daughters), and for more formal commercial uses such as office or gallery space. The main residential area, which includes two bedrooms and an open living room, sits above. The house is both the home and living laboratory for the couple, who have made it their personal trial grounds for materials, light, and unorthodox construction techniques. Experiments range from floors of expansive steel plates, walls of thermal plastics, and magnetic closet/display walls, to integrated passive energy strategies, ingenious waste-stream material reclamation, and high-tech thermal and solar power collection.

 

 

Letting in Light (and Some Rain)

The studio interior is divided by a 50-foot long wall of sliding pin-up doors which reconfigure to reveal library shelving, storage and service rooms, a conference space, and kitchenette. The open interior upstairs breathes light deep into the core of the building where an operable skylight stretches across the house, letting in the sky (and, on occasion, rain). The translucent and luminous materials imbue the small home with a sense of volume and openness. Cabinetry walls of lacquer and stainless-steel slide and swing to absorb program, while the reconfigured roof integrates an organic vegetable garden, hot tub, and green roof.

 

 

 

 

 

A Core Flora and Fauna

The ground floor access to both residential and commercial units is through a facade of shingled glass built entirely of reclaimed material, creating an unusual “Greenskin” of refracted light filtered through superimposed frames. The lower unit opens up through a sliding plastic facade onto a confined rear yard containing a translucent garden shed/playhouse and a wood-tiled deck nestled between a swath of drought-tolerant swaying grasses and a tall bamboo forest. Meanwhile, the rear 30-foot-tall corrugated thermal plastic facade looks into the canopy of the timber bamboo grove.

 

 

 

• Residential

Mission House Published in the New York Times