RESOURCES
Did you see something you like in one of our
feature stories? This handy resource guide will
tell you who made the major pieces in our
pages, what type of item it is and where to
find it. Happy shopping.
OUTSIDE THE BOX
EXTERIOR Entry door, custom-made pivot
door, painted red glass, Fenestration Concepts, fenestrationconcepts.com. Siding,
Delta’s Burn & Brush, Shou-Sugi Ban, Delta
Millworks, deltamillworks.com. Windows,
Fleetwood, fleetwoodusa.net. LANDSCAPING
Outdoor seating, bench in grotto, Galanter &
Jones, Helios Lounge, galanterandjones.com.
Hot Tub, Diamond Spas, diamondspas.com.
Fire pit, HPC, hpcfire.com. Lawn swings, Paola
Lenti, paolalenti.it. ENTRY Lighting, pendant,
Bocci, bocci.ca. SECOND FLOOR Untitled
sculpture, 2016, under stair, Kirk Stoller,
kirkstoller.com. MEDIA ROOM Mah Jong
lounge seating, Roche Bobois, roche-bobois.
com. Black Marquina marble countertop, New
Marble Co., newmarbleco.com. Charcoal gray
silk rug, ABC Carpet, abchome.com. MUSIC
ROOM Green USM modular shelving, Haller,
usm.com. Green Taurus alcove fabric, Maharam, maharam.com. Walls/paint, Snow Fall
White #OC118, Benjamin Moore, benjamin
moore.com. Flooring, fir, First Last Always,
first-last-always.com. MASTER BEDROOM
Reclaimed bleached plain sliced Douglas fir
wood wall, First Last Always. Bed, Ruche,
Ligne Roset, ligne-roset.com. MASTER
BATHROOM Plumbing fixtures, Sen Series,
finish black, Agape, agapedesign.it. Tub, Sabbi
Freestanding, Boffi, boffi.com. Rain shower,
Balance Modules, Dornbracht, dornbracht.
com. Sink, Evo-E2 Series, Agape. Countertop/
flooring, Calcatta Oro classic marble, New
Marble Co. LIVING ROOM Couch, Tuffy Time,
B&B Italia, bebitalia.com. Fireplace, 150 Series,
Ortal, ortalheat.com. Fireplace surround,
blackened steel, custom, standard sheet metal.
Lighting, tape in downlighting, Lucifer,
luciferlighting.com. Sliding door, Norwood
series, Fleetwood. KITCHEN/Dining Island
Lamperti Contracting & Design | San Rafael | lampertikitchens.com
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60 WNTER/SPRNG 2017 SPACES SPACES WNTER/SPRNG 2017 61
outside the box
A SAN FRANCISCO HIDEOUT, WHOSE SPARE, ART-FILLED
INTERIOR OPENS TO SPECTACULAR VIEWS, A TIERED GARDEN
AND DECKS, IS DESIGNED FOR LIVING INSIDE AND OUT.
BY ZAHID SARDAR PHOTOGRAPHS BY ERIC LAIGNEL
IN A FAST-PACED DIGITAL WORLD,
disruption is a virtue. So although this 1930s house in San Francisco’s
verdant Glen Park area had been extensively remodeled in 2012, its new
owner, a 28-year-old tech entrepreneur, wanted to make further changes.
The four-story, 4,000-square-foot building on a steep up-sloping hillside
had four bedrooms, a media room, several bathrooms, a panoramic view
of the city and bay, and easy access to Silicon Valley. But its unfinished
backyard, gray stucco exterior, gray-stained oak floors, walnut casework
and hemmed-in hallways were all unremarkable.
To put his stamp on what is the very first home he has called his own,
the young owner enlisted the help of Akemi Tamaribuchi Reed, his former
hairstylist, who is now his design touchstone.
“My role is very atypical,” Reed, who heads a lifestyle consultancy firm
called Subject to Change, explains.
The backyard, only accessible via a footbridge off the fourth-floor living
spaces, was a priority, so, in 2013, Reed got landscape designers John
and Danielle Steuernagel to work on it. Then came architect Cass Calder
Smith, whose New York/San Francisco–based firm CCS Architecture was
hired to rethink the flooring and the staircase, which rises in a straight
line between the foyer and the third floor before it switches back to go
up to the fourth floor. Before long, the project scope grew to include the
interiors and the facade.
Working alongside each other, both teams dovetailed their design expertise to craft a seamless indoor/outdoor living space.
Steuernagel, who grew up in New Jersey with a father in the flower
nursery business, started the San Francisco landscape firm Sculpt in 2003.
Many unique gardens ensued, including one for a blind man, but access-wise, none as challenging as the one in Glen Park.
The Sculpt team easily added a koi pond and a heated Helios bench
by Galanter & Jones in an existing open-to-sky grotto with a waterfall
fountain off a rear guest room on the third floor.
The rest of the 100-foot-deep tiered yard, previously shored up by
stacked rubble, took nearly two years to redo with new concrete retaining
walls and terraces. Now, the footbridge leads to a dining patio with a fire
pit and an outdoor kitchen; farther uphill are a sunken stainless steel hot
tub and an outdoor shower, an artificial lawn with lounge chairs and
bleachers and, at the very top, a plinth for an observation shed.
CCS, led by project architect Bjorn Steudte, later transformed the shed
into a sculptural 10-by-10-foot mirrored cube, with a cylindrical interior
that contains an oculus inspired by artist James Turrell’s Skyspaces.
Midway up the garden, an old apple tree was heavily pruned and saved,
and plantings such as palms, leafy tropical philodendrons, Colocasia “
elephant ears” and creeping leucadendron ground cover were added. At the
very top, a green wall with Soleirolia soleirolii, or baby’s tears, combined
with dwarf geraniums came from Flora Grubb nursery.
“The owner loves bright colors and pop art and we wanted something
cartoony, young and fun outside as well,” Danielle Steuernagel, who used
to be an event planner, says.
Inside the house, “My client was still trying to define his style,” Reed
adds. However, as a MIT dropout who came to the Bay Area to start a tech
company, he is partial to modernism and rejected the house’s decorative
hardware and other flourishes.
Clockwise from this page: For a San
Francisco home, CCS Architecture
formed a foyer gallery, with a pivoting
red front door, in which a framed cast
plaster panel, “Still Life With Fruit”
by Matthew Palladino hangs above a
bench that contains slippers for guests;
the charred cedar exterior is complemented with a tall entry porch lined
with back-painted red glass; a bleached
Douglas fir wood staircase, with side
walls perforated for display niches, goes
from the foyer to the third floor, interrupted only by a second-floor landing.
