Metal planters that recently appeared on San Francisco street corners have been described as “hostile architecture” by a former Coalition on Homelessness human rights organizer.

The planters will presumably soon hold some plants, perhaps even flowers, and were recently installed on the corners of Ashbury Street and Masonic Avenue where the two roads meet Grove Street in the leafy NoPa neighborhood—either side of the City College of San Francisco John Adams Campus. The college did not respond to a request for comment. The Standard has been unable to find out who installed the planters.

“This hostile architecture was installed on Ashbury @ Grove & Grove @ Masonic,” wrote X user Kelley Cutler on the platform formerly known as Twitter on Tuesday. “I don’t see a permit. I was surprised to see such blatant anti-homeless tactics being used in such a progressive neighborhood. Can DPW please remove them?”

Hostile architecture is usually defined as a type of urban design that seeks to stop certain behaviors. Infamous examples include anti-homeless spikes and uncomfortably designed benches. Nevertheless, the debate around planters possibly being used as a defense against homeless camps is nothing new—there’s even a parody site for a city planter company.

“For the life of me, I can’t see how putting planters at the edge of a broad sidewalk hurts homeless people,” wrote X user Sudha Lakshmi in response to Cutler’s post.

For the life of me I can’t see how putting planters at the edge of a broad sidewalk hurts homeless people.

— Sudha Lakshmi (@sudha_lakshmi) September 20, 2023

One NoPa local laughed off the idea the planters were indeed “hostile” toward homeless people, noting there are already several small encampments in the area.

“I doubt that that’s going to work,” said Dee Allen, chuckling. Allen lives on Ashbury Street near a small encampment and added he thought the planters were an unhoused person’s property but hoped they would soon bring a spark of color to the neighborhood.

Steve Valeck is a homeless man living in a tent along Grove Street. He moved to San Francisco last year from Wisconsin in search of the ’60s counter-culture vibe his mother told him stories about in his youth.

Steve Valeck, 57, is homeless and lives along Grove Street. He moved to San Francisco from Wisconsin last year. | Source: Joel Umanzor/The Standard

The 57-year-old has been living on Grove Street for 70 days—longer than any other location he put his tent up in San Francisco since moving here.  

“I had good intentions to start a job out here, but the people I came here with were no good trash,” he said. Currently, Valeck lives in one of three tents on the same block as the planters.

Valeck feels like the NoPa community is split in half on his presence in the neighborhood and hopes the new planters are not meant to signal it’s time for him to move on.

“We’re not sitting up here with boils, getting all messed up, slumped over like zombies,” Valeck said. “You know, San Francisco is an icon for anyone, really. Not just for drugs, but experimenting and opening up new cultures and new ways, man.”

Masonic Avenue homeowner Steve St. Denny said issues with encampments on Grove have gotten worse recently and that he hoped the planters would deter any more of them from popping up.

“If it works, they should put in a lot more,” the flooring contractor said.

Planters sit in front of a residence near the corner of Masonic and Grove streets on Wednesday. | Source: Joel Umanzor/The Standard

Denny said the planters could encourage more people to walk around the neighborhood, which could “push homeless people away.”

“I deserve to feel safe walking around in my neighborhood, especially if I’m paying what I’m paying,” Denny said. “You spend a million and a half dollars on a condo, you’re going to spend a few thousand a month on property taxes and you deserve to be able to be safe and feel safe.”

Last September, the Coalition on Homelessness and several homeless plaintiffs alleged in a lawsuit that San Francisco violated its own policies on homelessness. The lawsuit also alleged that the city illegally destroyed homeless people’s property during encampment sweeps. The legal battle continues and has divided San Francisco while capturing the attention of the nation.

Newly installed planters line the 1800 block of Grove Street on Wednesday. | Source: Joel Umanzor/The Standard

Supervisor Dean Preston, who represents the area, and the Coalition on Homelessness did not respond to requests for comment.

Tensions have been rising in NoPa between residents and homeless people, reports NBC Bay Area. Locals recently raised $15,000 to install planters at Fell Street and Central Avenue after a tent fire.

A Department of Public Works spokesperson told The Standard the planters appear to comply with their rules after reviewing photos of them. She said complaints should be directed to 311.

The post San Francisco Homeless: Planters Dubbed ‘Hostile Structure’ appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

The 1886 Dr. P.B. Fagan House at Mission & Union streets. it was designed by J.C. Matthews of Oakland in Eastlake/Qheen Anne style, and is a great example of a furniture-like finish, including on the chimney. (F.S. Harrison’s 1892 county brochure).

Brunswick native LeBaron R. Olive became a carpenter as a teen, moving at 19 first to Boston in 1868, then to Manhattan. In the Big Apple, Olive became superintendent of construction for a number of New York’s finest buildings. The 37-year-old Olive was attracted to Santa Cruz in 1886, loving its suburban setting and picturesque architecture. While LeBaron appeared quite formal with his lacquered hair and wax mustache, he had a gregarious side that underscored his free approach to architecture.

At first, he served as supervisor and contractor on other architect’s projects, becoming close friends with the “Stick King,” Daniel Damkroeger. Alpine Stick was one of the “Arts & Crafts” styles popular in Central California, while Olive preferred its later evolution of “Eastlake Style.” Charles Locke Eastlake was a beloved English furniture designer and his turned posts, carved brackets and fretwork panels were borrowed to use in “Stick-Eastlake” style cottages. Eastlake himself was not happy for his name to grace such a California travesty, which wasn’t even “a true revival style.” Wallpaper designer Christopher Dresser even created themed rooms of Greek, Gothic, Nouveau, Moorish and Japanese styles. The architecture even incorporated Astian-style “Botany Panels” depicting birds, flowers, foliage or vases. This lack of stylistic consistency may have been more pronounced on the West Coast, where many contractors without classical training, filled in as architects, mixing styles freely from the millwork yards. Some called it the “Free Classic Style,” and Olive preferred to have this freedom.

“Cherry Court” was the 1889 home of Santa Cruz Sentinel publisher Duncan McPherson, at the corner of Chestnut and Church streets. Architect J.H. Williams shows the evolution replacing plain Alpine Stick-style gingerbread with furniture-like Eastlake millwork. (F.S. Harrison’s 1892 county brochure)

The “Arts & Crafts Movement” was a progressive reaction against the industrial revolution’s pollution, poverty, degradation of nature, and disenfranchisement of craft professionals. It idealized simple country life, hoping to improve the countryside with picturesque architecture and inspire a folkcraft movement that would bring the arts to all walks of life. Eastlake sought to justify the practicality of his artistic simplicity. He wrote in his 1874 book “Hints on Household Taste,” that to depict a realistic rose, would be a tripping or crushing incident if real. Instead, it should be reduced to a geometric folk design. Yet the “Aesthetic Movement” discarded all justification, believing in “Art for Art’s Sake.” Beauty needs no excuse. It was said that Olive “endeavors to adapt his buildings to their surroundings. His style is light and airy, and his work as a whole has given this young man a desirable and enviable reputation.” (Harrison, 1892).

Santa Cruz work

Olive did some magnificent Eastlake Villas, although what looks like a mansion to modern eyes was actually the homes of the middle class. And indeed the structures were built like pieces of furniture. Damkroeger and Olive worked together on the Thomas J. Weeks House at 724 California St.; the Harriet M. Blackburn House at Pacific and Sycamore (near Olive’s own Sycamore St. house), the Wm. Kerr House on Old San Jose Road, and the Soquel School. In 1891, Olive designed the Capt. Wm. Gray House at 250 Ocean View Ave., which was considered so beautiful, that A.M. Johnston ordered an exact replica of it nearby at 317 Ocean View Ave. Other notable homes were the 1889 H.H. Clark House at 104 King St., the Barfield “Rio Vista House” at 611 Third St. and Rio Vista; and the Anson Litchfield Cottage at 311 Oceanview Ave.

Tiny homes

While his larger picturesque villas were real scene stealers, Olive was also known for producing small artistic cottages that felt like mansions. It was part of the progressive ethos of the Arts & Crafts Movement, siding with the living conditions of laborers, with beautiful worker housing intended to reinforce the notion that one’s home is one’s castle. Olive produced numerous Baycliff Model homes, usually one story on a half-basement, L-shaped, with a corner porch in the “L”, a front bay window, and front gable.  These are still quite desirable today.

Transcendentalists had helped settle the community of Seabright. But unlike the Puritan impulse to reject art as frivolous, sacrilegious, or useless excess; Transcendentalists believed beauty was the visible expression of God’s harmony, and nature was the return to God’s Eden. They created a community of tiny homes, often decorated with gingerbread, similar to the cottage retreat in Chautauqua, New York. There are several surviving versions of a Chautauqua Eastlake cottage in Seabright, each once included a second floor coved sleeping balcony (all now enclosed). They also believed in the Arts & Crafts Movement to bring art to all walks of life. Seabright widow Forbes opened the first arts and crafts gallery downtown to support her children, and when she closed it, F.A. Hihn opened the Santa Cruz Decorative Arts Society in 1885, bringing in commission items from mostly women artists.

Practical jokes

Once in 1890, Olive got a box in the mail, marked “From T.J. Clunie.” This was the popular Sacramento Democrat, an assemblyman in 1879, a state senator in 1887, and would become a congressman in 1891.  Clunie always mailed out his political advertisements with a packet of vegetable seeds, and he’d send what was left to select friends to pass out. Olive was delighted at the prospect, and took the package to Brazer’s bookstore in the Odd Fellows Building, to open in front of his friends. But instead of vegetable seeds, it was a box of moldy walnuts marked “Californiensis mildewensis.” The group speculated as to who the prankster was, and noticed Dr. Thompson Drullard the dentist, who had rooms just upstairs, was suspiciously absent.

The 1888 A.J. Hinds House at 529 Chestnut Street, was built by J.H. Williams with a furniture-like Eastlake finish, “China hutch” stacked balcony and gate-leg turned porch posts. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places. (F.S. Harrison’s 1892 county brochure)

Drullard was running for city councilman. The next day, people were popping into the California Market, which was displaying a rare Giant Devil Ray that had been brought in by a fisherman.  When Olive saw it with its wide mouth, he thought of his prankster friend Drullard. So he sent the stinking carcass to the dentist’s office with instructions to fit it up with a complete set of dentures!  The dentist suddenly found a large crowd of rubber-neckers filing through his office all day just to see the devil ray.

Olive’s 1886 Arlington Hotel stood at the head of Pacific Avenue (last known in the 1970s as the McHugh & Bianchi Grocers). It was built for the “Whiskey King” of San Francisco, A.P. Hotaling. It was one of the first two Santa Cruz landmarks placed on the National Register of Historic Places, was a designated theme building of the Pacific Avenue National Downtown Historic District, and was illegally demolished in 1973 by Golden West Savings Bank. Olive also designed the Laurel School, the Congregational Church (Boys & Girls Club site), across the street from Calvary Episcopal Church, The C.B. Pease Building at 1532 Pacific Ave., the Boulder Creek Hotel, and the Soquel Odd Fellows Lodge.

Bad luck

In February 1891, both LeBaron and his wife Sarah Anne came down with influenza, making it hard to care for their five children. Convalescing for a week, his wife suddenly died. After her burial, he was still sick with flu, came home, and two days later, warming himself beside the fireplace, some embers got loose and started a fire. Olive evacuated his children from the house, ran to the curbside firebox, but the key switch to turn on the alarm was missing. Someone else went running down the street yelling “Fire!” until the Alerts Hook & Ladder Company showed up. They attached their hose to the Hihn Company water hydrant, but the water pressure was too weak to reach the fire, and “would have been a discredit to a garden hose,” the Surf noted.  Then the Pilot Hose Company arrived and attached their hose to the city hydrant. The pressure was at last more than sufficient, to the point that it burst their canvas fire hose! The house burned for about an hour, while the fire companies battled the blaze with buckets. Volunteers managed to save LeBaron’s furniture, but not his Persian carpets.

One of the ironies of this story is that, only two years before, LeBaron became one of the first architects to design roof sprinklers into some of his home commissions, to guard against this very thing! The only good news about the fire, was that within 11 hours after his house burned, the Home Mutual Insurance Company paid LeBaron’s claim for damages. And within 15 days, his home was completely rebuilt, and ready to be roofed. (The speed was considered a record, even in those days).

The plunge

By 1893, the 1868 Dolphin baths and 1879 Neptune baths at the Main Beach were quite inadequate for the waterfront’s growing popularity. So Captain Fred Miller joined Johnnie and David Leibbrandt, to build a new plunge. With the financial backing of San Francisco’s A.P. Hotaling, they hired LeBaron R. Olive, who studied the best bathhouses on the coast and incorporated numerous features into his $25,000 creation. The Miller-Leibbrandt Bathhouse was state of the art, with an Eastlake beach veranda, the indoor hot salt water plunge had observation balconies, trapeze equipment, two glass-lined slides and diving boards.

This was the pinnacle of Olive’s success in Santa Cruz. In 1903, his office and residence were at 543 Bay St. and included a telephone. In 1904, he moved to Palo Alto to make architecture for the community around Stanford University, including “Professorville.” Olive continued to innovate with new styles. In 1909 he built the small Portola Valley School west of Palo Alto, in a wood-clad “Mission Revival Style.” The structure is now on the National Register for Historic Places. Olive died in 1942.

LeBaron R. Olive’s 1891 A.M. Johnston Villa, at 317 Ocean View Avenue. It was once the twin of the Capt. Gray Villa at 250 Ocean View Avenue. This Eastlake design has an octagonal tower under a “witches hat” cap with “pie-crust trim.” The porch has “birdhouse panels” with “bird-cage” beaded spandrels. (Ross Eric Gibson collection).

The post Constructing structure like furnishings | Ross Eric Gibson, Native Historical past – Santa Cruz Sentinel appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

Rau House / Feldman Architecture

© Adam Rouse

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https://www.archdaily.com/1002831/rau-haus-feldman-architecture
© Adam Rouse

Text description of the architects. A couple with a young daughter looking to get out of town in search of more space turned to Feldman Architecture to design a new home – a modern, secluded residence with a dedicated area for accommodating family and friends. The team’s vision focused on providing visitors with a site with breathtaking views of the Coal Creek Open Space Preserve while offering a rare, distant view of the San Francisco Bay to the north. Central to the design is the careful alignment of public and private living spaces for views while creating a sense of privacy from the neighboring properties above. The building’s 3,433-square-foot L-shaped floor plan gently hugs the eastern slope, creating a space for al fresco moments and framing diverse views from the indoor living spaces.

© Adam Rousesite plan© Adam Rouse

The volumes are carefully articulated in order to obscure the view of the surrounding properties as little as possible. The main wing runs north-south, expanding vertically into a double-height kitchen and dining area while visually connecting the main level with a work loft and upstairs bedrooms. Light wells and clerestory windows on the east façade welcome the morning light and offer views of the countryside without compromising privacy. A single-story structure topped by a green roof extends vertically – blending into the surrounding landscape and creating a multi-purpose space for play, exercise and entertainment at pool level. The infinity pool acts as a threshold where the well-groomed landscape merges into the original meadow landscape.

© Adam Rouse© Adam Rouse

Bay views to the north are captured from the main suite and public from an observation deck. It was important to the builders that this roof terrace be accessible to the public without compromising the privacy of their bedroom. Low-maintenance, durable materials define the material palette: exterior concrete clads the second floor, and Monterey cypress cladding that resists the weather over time elegantly connects the main level. The cement render and cypress batons are stacked geometrically and blend seamlessly with the interior – understated, modern and clean materiality sets the tone for the interior and landscape moments.

© Adam RouseFloor plan 1st floor

At Rau’s house, a 6.24 kW PV array provides the home with 9,777 kWh of renewable energy per year, and two Heliodyne solar panels power a 119-gallon storage tank. The house is equipped with all indoor electrical appliances and an electric heat pump HVAC system combined with passive heating and cooling strategies ensure the house stays at the right temperature all year round. The design utilizes deep overhangs and recessed windows to provide passive solar shading, and thoughtfully placed operable doors, windows and skylights encourage cross ventilation in all living spaces. Outdoor terraces with different shading throughout the house allow comfortable use at different times of the day. Site-salvaged and milled Monterey cypress siding is naturally weathered with no additional post-processing, and all concrete is mixed with 30% fly ash to reduce the project’s carbon content.

© Adam Rouse© Adam Rouse

“This project allowed us to create a space of calm and balance, with a design that creates horizontal and vertical connections within and with the landscape. It was expertly executed by the client, who took wonderful care and precision in the details and material connections.” Steven Stept, AIA, Project Manager. – “Below the quiet design sensibility lies a rigorous articulation of forms and spaces, precisely detailed within a carefully curated palette of materials. “The home reflects the spirit of the place and sets the stage for everyday life to unfold,” says Anjali Iyer, LEED AP, project architect.

© Adam Rouse

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Managing a building or renovation project is actually managing a number of different, interrelated tasks. Something as small as a kitchen remodel can involve half a dozen contractors, including plumbers, electricians, carpenters, and painters. The complexity often leads to cost and time overruns.

On the other hand, “Architecture is a passionate business,” says Moe Amaya MA ’14. “Most people don’t get into it because they want to run a company’s operations. They just want to design buildings – that’s the real value you want to bring to the world.”

Now, start-up Monograph, co-founded by Amaya and two others, helps architects execute projects with a suite of business tools that make it easy to understand if a project is on track. Architects use Monograph to create budgets, assign tasks to different team members, send out invoices, and create timesheets. On the go, they can view real-time reports on any project to fix issues before they become revenue-sapping delays.

The idea is to remove uncertainty from the construction process while giving architects the tools they need to run a successful business.

“A good 50 percent of architects are self-employed, but there is a gap in education around architecture and business,” says Alex Dixon, co-founder of Monograph, MA ’14. “When architects explain their business processes to us, they often ask, ‘Is there a better way?’ They kind of make it up as they go because they don’t have much business training. We help them run and grow a profitable business.”

Since its inception in 2019, Monograph has attracted more than 800 clients, the vast majority of which are architectural firms with fewer than 50 employees. Co-founders Dixon, Amaya and Robert Yuen believe their success is due in part to Monograph’s ability to help architects focus on what brought them to the profession in the first place: designing better buildings.

“I look at Monograph as the level that helps architects understand finance — not through the lens of spreadsheets and graphs and accounting metrics — but through design,” says Amaya. “We’re giving them what they need to know as designers to get these projects across the finish line.”

Building design solutions

Dixon and Amaya met in 2010 during their freshman year of the MIT Masters of Architecture program. They quickly became friends and would live together by the second year. In the summer before his third year at MIT, Dixon worked at MIT Professor Sheila Kennedy’s company to help with the design of his website and to teach himself to code on the side.

The experience prompted Dixon and Amaya, who had no formal programming experience, to enter a software competition at MIT. They didn’t have the most polished code in the competition, but they ended up winning an award for their design skills.

The recognition further inspired them to try their hand at software design and over the next two years they explored different website ideas and in 2014 they participated in the Martin Trust Center’s Delta v Summer Startup Accelerator to build a business that helps architecture firms design theirs sites supported.

“We just started hacking together, ventured into writing code, and that’s where the entrepreneurial journey began,” says Amaya.

The founders also took a course at MIT, 4.222 (Professional Practice) taught by the late MIT professor Philip Freelon, which taught them a great deal about how to run a good architecture firm.

“We loved Philip because he put everything into how he structured his entire business,” says Dixon. “He was a big inspiration for us. We were captivated by his lectures. He has run an incredible business and we see his spirit in a lot of the things we do at Monograph.”

After graduation, the two moved to San Francisco and joined many of their classmates from the architecture program who later went into architecture firms. They kept in touch with the new architects, and during the MIT alumni happy hour, they asked their former classmates about their projects.

“We heard a constant refrain: You have no idea,” recalls Dixon. “They said, ‘I think we’re going to be on time and on budget.’ But it was obvious that things were based on anecdotes and hopes. It was a confirmation to see this trend among everyone involved in architecture. That fueled the idea of ​​creating more of a business dashboard for architects to help them manage the performance of their projects so they can improve their forecasting and better understand the business as a whole.”

It was around this time that Dixon and Amaya partnered with Yuen, and the founders began creating tools to help companies manage the business side of an architecture firm, using their design skills to create tools that could handle multiple processes streamline and give architects real-time snapshots into projects.

Today, when an architect creates a new project in Monograph, they enter the phases of the project, the timeline for each task, assign roles to each team member, and create a detailed budget.

Once the project is underway, Monograph visualizes cost and time data so architects can easily see if a project is on track. Team members enter timesheets and add expenses directly in Monograph, making it easy to create invoices for clients. Monograph can also create project reports and forecast income and expenses.

“What’s unique about the service industry is that your time is money — it’s all billable hours,” says Amaya. “Many of the typical task management tools don’t involve money. Alex developed this [bar chart] this shows you how far you are in the budget based on the timesheet entries. For architects, these are two very important data points that other professions might not care about: the joint visualization of money and time. That is still one of our strongest differentiators.”

Better business architecture

The founders say that one of the main reasons clients use Monograph is that they are interested in growing their architectural practices – and many of Monograph’s clients have done just that. Their customers’ desire for growth guides the founders in deciding which features to develop next.

“Today, Monograph is primarily focused on being business performance software that allows architects to review the day-to-day performance of their projects,” says Dixon. “But the ultimate vision of business is forecasting, so you can look ahead and ask tough questions like, ‘Do I have enough work?’ can answer. and ‘Do I need to hire more people?’”

Also this year, Monograph will begin developing tools for contractors and consultants who work with architects and face similar challenges.

Ultimately, Monograph aims to expand the type of data collected on projects to give everyone a clearer picture of progress.

“We want to be the complete end-to-end record-keeping system for the construction industry,” says Dixon. “Architecture is part of it, but architects work with many consultants who support the project, from bidding to construction and management of the building. There are hundreds of people working on the same core project, the building, but each uses a different system. There is an opportunity to bring all this information together so there is a lot less double entry and a lot more collaboration.”

The post Taking the guesswork out of the structure enterprise | MIT Information appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

We’ve selected seven promising positions in North America on Dezeen Jobs this week including roles in San Francisco, New York and Phoenix.

Dezeen Jobs is currently advertising architecture and interior design roles across the US at well-established practices including SO-IL, OMA and Dattner.

Associate at SO – IL in New York

SO-IL is seeking an associate to join its team in New York. The firm renovated and extended an 18th-century glass factory in France in collaboration with Parisian studio FREAKS.

View all vacancies in New York ›

Project architect at Studio Ma in Phoenix

Studio Ma designed the Museum of the West in Phoenix, which has a textured concrete and timber exterior and contains both contemporary and historical artifacts related to the American West. The studio is looking for a project architect to join their team in Arizona.

View all project architect vacancies ›

Senior interior designer/senior interior architect at Morris Adjmi Architects in New York

Morris Adjmi Architects is seeking a senior interior designer/senior interior architect to join his team in New York. The practice designed the interiors of The Roost East Market hotel in Philadelphia, whose rooms feature an eclectic mix of finishes and soft furnishings to create a home-like atmosphere.

View all senior-level roles ›

Junior interior designer at Dattner Architects in New York

Dattner Architects designed a distinctive garage and salt shed for New York’s sanitation department in collaboration with WXY. The firm is hiring a junior interior designer to join his team in New York.

View all vacancies at Dattner ›

Architectural intern at OMA in New York

OMA has openings for architectural interns at its office in New York to start as soon as possible for its fall (September) and winter (January) intake. The practice designed the Taipei Performing Arts Center in Taiwan, which features three protruding auditoriums.

View all internships ›

Senior design architect at Skylab Architecture in Portland

Skylab Architecture is hiring a senior design architect to join his team in Portland. The studio designed Owl Creek Residence in Colorado, defined by its triangular floor plan and angular projecting roof.

View all roles at Skylab ›

Intermediate designer at Piechota Architecture in San Francisco

Piechota Architecture created Silver Oak Cellars’ Sonoma Valley outpost featuring gabled buildings referencing the area’s vernacular architecture. The practice is seeking an intermediate designer to join his team in San Francisco.

View all intermediate-level roles ›

See all the latest architecture and design roles on Dezeen Jobs ›

The post Seven structure and inside design roles within the US appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

Klopf Architecture has reconfigured a San Francisco home to create an open-concept living space that faces onto the backyard.

After spending a few years in a spec house and eager to improve their living arrangement, the owners of this San Francisco residence looked to local studio Klopf Architecture to see if they could renovate their current home.

“The clients were able to see beyond the dated materials and finishes,” said the studio, and from there they decided to update the entire house.

The Modern Inversion project involved the renovation of a San Francisco home

The primary goal was to create an open layout for the living spaces, in contrast to the existing rooms, which were compartmentalized and dark.

“With raised ceiling heights and large windows and glass sliding doors, the open and airy great room now extends out onto the patio surrounded by lush landscaping to create one even larger indoor-outdoor room,” said Klopf Architecture.

The living spaces now open up to the backyard

The new layout for the home reversed the positions of the kitchen, living, and dining rooms with the bedrooms, lending the project its nickname, Modern Inversion.

The front of the home is closed off to the street. The former bay windows have been replaced with a solid white. Conversely, the rear has a large glass sliding door and is clad in weathered wood.

A light material palette is given texture by the ceiling’s wooden staves

As currently configured, the home is entered up a flight of stairs and directly into a large living space. The sliding glass doors open out onto the elevated backyard. Another flight leads directly to the patio from the street.

“Klopf was able to broaden the openness, continuing on the original architecture to take full advantage of the unobstructed natural light across the rear of the house and convert the area into a much more comfortable and functional indoor-outdoor living space,” the owners explained .

Clerestory windows were installed in the kitchen

The home’s two bedrooms now face the street and have some privacy from the rest of the home, since they are stepped down from the living area.

In addition to upgrading finishes, Klopf Architecture was able to raise the ceiling height in the living area, which contributes to the openness.

Klopf Architecture revamps mid-century home at Stanford University

A decorative ceiling made of wooden staves brings warmth to the interiors and matches the new kitchen cabinets as well as the fireplace.

Integrated lighting systems run along the battens that divide the space, “visually connecting while also defining the use areas within the space”, said Klopf Architecture.

The bedrooms are on the street-facing side

Architect John Klopf established Klopf Architecture in 2001. Based in San Francisco, the studio has completed work throughout the United States including the renovation of several mid-century homes by Joseph Eichler.

Other San Francisco properties include an apartment building by Woods Bagot that features a five-storey green wall, and a private residence with curvaceous interiors that are meant to resemble clouds.

The photography is by Mariko Reed.

Project credits:

Klopf Architecture project team: Geoff Campen, John Klopf, Sherry Tan, and Alison Markowitz-Chan
Interior furnishings and decoration: Urbanism Design
Contractor: San Francisco Design and Construction
Landscape architect: Terremoto
Structural engineer: ZFA

The post Klopf Structure updates San Francisco house with a “fashionable inversion” appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

Explore Endemic Architecture’s recent Oakland, California exhibition, Mind Your Mannerisms, at the Jai & Jai Gallery in Los Angeles the existential importance behind San Francisco’s variant the Victorian Tower, which the company calls one of the many “architectural favorites” that populate our world.

For the company, “favorites” consist of fundamentally architectural symbols that convey universal meaning in their built form, such as the Pillar, gable or chimney. These “favorites” are the elements that are widely understood as words by laypeople used in the formal language of architecture and at the same time employed (or subverted) by Architects themselves say: “That is (still) architecture”.

In Mind Your Mannerisms the selected “darling” – turret – is pricked, pinched and warped in order not only to give its bizarre forms a sense of intellectual severity, but also to generate a new level of new meaning and understanding that results from the manipulation of its symbolic, anachronistic geometries.

(Courtesy Endemic Architecture)

The company uses collections contextual photography show the diverse manifestations the tower typology in San Francisco’s built environment as a starting point to generate generalized drawings of certain observed tendencies. The favorite is redefined from a custom-made object of discreet architecture Components of a collection of quasi-digital surfaces in which a series of formal maneuvers were applied to two different objects: the tower itself and the so-called “Victorian” building to which it is attached.

The company uses these guiding considerations to generate interventions that are conducted on a handful of existing and observed tower types, with an emphasis on these aspects of each individual type and the conditions that are found to be reinforced or deformed. These interventions are first through a series of beguiling, shaded line drawings, side by side comparisons of found and manipulated views in gold-colored frames. The turrets take on the formal ambiguities of MC Escher drawings, since cornices touch and sweep around rounded corners, conical roof forms loft to meet simply sloping and wall sections are deleted or extruded up and down in the shape. Shingles and siding are also included; they are scaled, alternated and shifted accordingly.

(Courtesy Endemic Architecture)

The drawings are then brought into three dimensions via three large, ambiguously scaled maquettes. Two of these objects are installed directly on the gallery walls, painted with the black silhouettes of generic Victorian designs. A third form is free-standing, its bulbous and crumpled masses hang together in an exaggerated belly in the style of Pablo Escobar. The towers are given scale-less distortion through the use of repurposed, true-to-scale tower windows salvaged from recently demolished structures in the models. The relic windows, one with punched panes, the other with a series of secondary, beveled interior surfaces located just inside the window frame, again obscure the true nature of these sculptural ones Objects. Is everyone really a turret-shaped building? Are they One-to-one models of diminutive Towers? It’s hard to say, but that’s partly the point. this Transformation of orthography Drawing on objects-in-the-round gives every tower contradicting, multiple meanings since the physical Properties of their material Components collide with each other. A wall-mounted tower is clad in wood veneer panels that are cut out and designed so that their ends roll up. The free-standing tower is topped with a faux fur tiara.

And if we can stop by the Seuss-ian Take shapes and look at the towers for what they are – geometric abstractions – something locks into place: Thenhaus and his team use the Tower of San Francisco as a learning tool. By imposing an order and then manipulating it and working on generating new shapes that still fit the agreed definition of a tower, the designers add some clarity that is otherwise shrouded in mystery. The question is: are the new creations still Victorian turrets?

(Courtesy Endemic Architecture)

It’s hard to tell because Victorian architectural forms juggle many Considerations at the same time: They are typically proportioned for light and air, are aggressively decorated, and excellently break down massive buildings into pleasant collections of cute things like cornicesWindows, porches and yes, turrets. Victorian architecture makes from the perspective of the rationalist, diagram-driven methodology of the contemporary Practice applied here to their formal existence.

By subsuming the The researchers show the peculiarities of the Victorian style ecosystem on the sparse lexical memory of their profession and the way in which building components, formerly discrete, measurable and observable objects, have been replaced by digital modeling processes in contemporary discourse and “if, then” reactions where collections of points, lines, and planes are swept, lofted, tweened, and booleanized to create a shape. In both cases, meaning arises from the processes of form formation and not, as in Victorian architecture, from the symbolic and physical properties of the forms themselves.

Viewed through this lens, the works presented in the exhibition can not only be seen as generative, architectural by-products that have arisen from an architecture-focused observation, but as an independent part of this conversation. That means, Endemics turrets with their enigmatic proportions, the gimmicky of the material and the lateral view of the playful formalism are at Endemics attempt
define the tower typology as the observed towers themselves.

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NICOLEHOLLIS

Employer:

San Francisco, CA, USAPlace:

Wed, February 24, 21Published on:

Full timeType:

IA RESIDENTIAL DESIGN ASSISTANT

NICOLEHOLLIS, an award-winning large interior design firm, is looking for a talented and motivated IA design assistant to support our residential design team.

The IA Design Assistant contributes to the success of Nicole Hollis, Inc. by helping with general office and design tasks, drawing, sourcing, coordinating, filing libraries and images. The ideal candidate will have 2-3 years of experience in residential interior design with an emphasis on high-end home design.

RESPONSIBILITIES AND MATERIAL WORK FUNCTIONS INCLUDE BUT ARE NOT LIMITED TO THE FOLLOWING:

The main role of Design Assistant is to assist the designers during the design process by gathering the necessary design materials for projects, including:

• Materials, surfaces, appliances, plumbing, hardware and bathroom accessories.
• Color and finish options, preliminary color schemes
• Write mood boards, collect relevant pictures.
• Drafting of views, floor plans and presentation of presentation drawings.

Organize and maintain the design library:

• Set up meetings with vendors and present new materials to the project team
• Research building materials and surfaces.
• Maintain the library and send the samples back to the Design Center.
• Collect relevant images from magazines and books
• Research new products and materials

Prepare for customer meetings and other tasks as needed:

• Gather and pack the necessary materials and organize the meeting’s agenda
• Write and revise the facility specifications
• Create budgets, schedules, and specifications
• Enter meeting notes and create project folders

COMPETENCIES:

• Degree in interior design or interior design
• At least 2 years of experience in interior design
• Excellent presentation skills including room planning and drawing
• Knowledge of AutoCAD, AutoCAD LT
• Ability to read a range of design documents and section details
• Ability to create and manage Excel tables
• Knowledge of Adobe Illustrator, InDesign and Photoshop
• Knowledge and / or ability to learn about time recording and accounting software
• Experience in the selection and specification of mills, lighting, hardware, plumbing, materials and surfaces
• Experience with Spexx preferred
• Experience with Sketchup and / or 3DSMax preferred
• Ability to interact effectively with the design team on multiple projects
• Experience with budgets
• Knowledge of trading resources and providers

CORE COMPETENCIES:

• Task Focus: Provides customers and vendors with legendary service that meets and exceeds expectations.
• Ethics and Integrity: Follow Nicole Hollis, Inc.’s values, beliefs, and principles for innovation and design excellence
• Serenity: stay calm, maintain perspective and react professionally to difficult situations
• Personal learning: Takes personal responsibility for continuously learning new knowledge, skills and experiences
• Dealing with Ambiguity: Can function successfully in times of uncertainty and changing priorities
• Decision Making: Makes sharp and timely decisions based on a mixture of analysis, wisdom, experience and judgment
• Interpersonal Skills: Builds effective relationships with everyone – up, down, and sideways, inside and outside of Nicole Hollis, Inc.
• Results-oriented: Achieve results and achieve goals

This position is full-time, perpetual, with full health coverage, 401 (k) Safe Harbor Matching, pre-tax flexible expense account, commuter benefits, 529 college pre-tax plan, and PTO

Please send your resume, portfolio and additional documents with CAD details, drawings, schedules and presentations and salary requirements to careers@nicolehollis.com

View your application history

The post Design Assistant (Targeted in Residential Inside Structure) – San Francisco, CA, US | Jobs appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.