The design for Funkhaus was largely inspired by our clients’ impressions and lived experiences of the original home, specifically their observations about the untapped potential of the sloping site with dramatic views. The couple dreamt of a series of improvements to their San Francisco home that felt unique and inevitable to the site, using words like enchanted, well-crafted, intimate, and private when asked to describe their vision, and put a distinct emphasis on richness of materiality and articulation of distinct spaces within an overall open concept. Our team set out to design a renovation that preserves the sense of refuge and shelter offered by the site, while honoring special moments from the original home.

A sunken front courtyard offers privacy from the street, carefully laying out a progression of experiences through the home towards the sloped rear yard, incorporating a series of unexpected views. ⁠The bedroom suites step back from the street, creating opportunities for landscaping to envelop the single-story massing that frames the courtyard. The various public spaces and decks follow the natural grade of the site, allowing for multiple special moments in lieu of one big reveal. A majestic Cedar tree in the northwest corner creates a programmatic anchor for both the landscape and architecture.  ⁠

The project’s interior design was both developed in collaboration with the clients, as well in response to their joyful art collection and eclectic lifestyle. Rich, deep colors and materiality elicit a retro vibe, while modern custom casework and millwork designate space to celebrate art. Hanging lanterns and lamps in the kitchen evoke a night market, and a custom fireplace in the living room melds the new with the old.

A Swiss couple alongside their two college-aged sons approached our studio with a vision for a sleek, modern home that reacts sensitively to a challenging, sloped site with restrictive setbacks. After conducting a series of siting exercises, our team identified a delicately bowed layout that both screens close neighbors and orients spaces towards landscaped moments and distant mountain views. Inspired by the family’s European sensibilities and the language of Swiss architecture, precise, detailed Aperture House provides a forward-thinking response to a restrictive site and the family’s progressive design aesthetic.

A great room seamlessly spills into an outdoor living space and two bedrooms sit comfortably on the main level, leading to a private primary suite lifted a few steps above. A strategically placed garage embedded into the sloping hillside provides a platform for the main level, visually delineating stories. On the upper level, an office, media room, and multiple view decks perch playfully, introducing a dynamic sense of scale. Wooden screening elements adorning the main level filter light and add textural interest. The exterior façade strategically informs the placement of meditative apertures, thoughtfully focusing interior spaces around views. An ADU at the opposite end of a pool provides private guest accommodations for family members on extended stay from Europe and houses a home gym for the clients and their family.

An ecologically diverse flag lot in Portola Valley served as inspiration for the responsive design of Canopy House. The site is a natural bowl, a large flat meadow flanked on two sides by a lush creek and on the other two by a sloping hill, creating a private, immersive geography. The clients, a dynamic couple with small children, envisioned a site-sensitive design that is elevated, modern, cozy, and unassuming, but most importantly intimately connected to the surrounding landscape.

Working closely with the landscape team, Ground Studio, we first conducted an in-depth site analysis of the property, crafting a plan to restore and rehabilitate the unmanaged landscape. To best restore the natural meadow, we will clear the existing invasive species allowing the new design to react organically to the intricate site.

The design consists of layered, interlocking, mirrored L-shaped forms that carefully frame the front yard entry moment, as well as a rear yard panorama. The airy ground floor flows directly into outdoor living areas – an open plan public great room, dining area, and kitchen and a protected exterior seating space create architectural thresholds, compressing and decompressing, mimicking the site’s natural rhythms. The upper level acts as a canopy; an elevated form that floats above landscape moments below, like a tree, casting dappled light and outdoor shading. The upper level sits nested among the surrounding trees, creating intimacy for bedrooms. The pool, at the rear of the site, stretches away from the structures into the meadow creating a sensation of floating out into the open meadow.

Further in harmony with the site, the structure is oriented 15 degrees of south, optimally exposed to control solar heat gain, and wind ventilation for passive cooling. The ground level is cooled by a stack effect, in which warm air is pulled out and expelled through a vertical double height atrium.