Hertfordshire studio Michael Collins Architects has added a boxy, two-storey copper and charred larch extension to a terraced house alongside a railway station in south London.

The extension and renovation was named Jewellery Box, as a nod to the way the Victorian terrace and subdued extension hide the home’s more vibrant interiors.

Micheal Collins Architects added a boxy extension to a Victorian terrace

“Our clients talked about the house having a jewellery box quality, where a simple form is pulled apart to reveal a more complex, light and textured interior,” explained Michael Collins Architects founder Michael Collins.

“The extension to the rear is conceived as two cubic volumes that slide across a plinth, with areas of glazing set between,” he told Dezeen.

The ground floor extension contains a kitchen

The studio extended the home to the rear with a pair of blocky additions that were informed by the various ad hoc extensions added to terraced houses in London that can often be seen when travelling by train in the city

On the ground floor, an oxidised-copper extension contains a kitchen and dining space, while a smaller charred larch-clad extension above houses a first-floor bathroom. This is topped with a roof deck that is accessed from the second floor.

The extension opens onto a small garden

“The block-like exterior was inspired by the simple poetry of stacked boxy self-built ‘add-ons’ and ‘closet returns’ seen along the rear of railway terraces that reflect the varied lives of their inhabitants, we weren’t keen on trying to create a highly ordered composition,” said Collins.

“A key issue was how to create a sense of spatial generosity on this constrained site, and how to address the steep natural embankment at the rear.”

Gold and Inchyra Blue are combined in the kitchen

The studio clad the outside of the home in dark industrial materials to reference the nature of the site alongside the railway tracks, and the home’s former owner who was a chimney sweep.

Satish Jassal Architects adds oak framed conservatory to renovated London townhouse

“The use of oxidised copper and charred larch were informed by the context,” said Collins. “Specifically the urban memory of a famous south London chimney sweep that lived and ran his business from the property, but also the sooty quality of the brickwork along the railway embankment, and the oxidised metal infrastructure found along the line.”

The interiors contrast the dark exterior

In contrast to the subdued exterior the interior spaces were decorated with bright colours, with Inchyra Blue cabinets and surfaces combined with gold backsplashes in the kitchen.

“An aquatic datum of flush panels conceal utility areas, larders, and a toilet wrapping around the internal walls of the kitchen to create a sense of immersion and continuity with the trained plants around the garden walls,” added Collins.

The studio also renovated the main house

Overall the architect believes that the home is fitting to its location and would not make sense anywhere else.

“We hoped the project would be as idiosyncratic as its surroundings,” he said.

“The project grew from the site and two very unique clients. These factors informed its orientation, massing and materiality and we like to think that it would not make sense on a different site.”

Jewellery Box was longlisted in the small interior category of Dezeen Awards 2020. This category was won by Sim-Plex Design Studio’s four-bedroom smart home in Hong Kong.

Photography is by Jacob Milligan.

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In partnership with the City of South San Francisco, San Francisco Opera’s Bohème Out of the Box is coming to Orange Memorial Park in March.

This free live performance of an abridged version of La Bohème, composer Giacomo Puccini’s popular work about love and loss, to a group of bohemian artists, is performed in an intimate hour-long version on a converted shipping container turned mobile opera Stage.

“We are honored and excited that the San Francisco Opera has selected our city as one of four mobile venues to perform Bohème Out of the Box,” said South San Francisco Mayor Flor Nicolas. “This recognition further underscores that our city is a great place to live, work, learn and play.”

The stage will be set on the lawn at Orange Memorial Park, 781 Tennis Drive, South San Francisco, with the Joseph Fernekes Recreation Building as a backdrop. The performance dates are Friday, March 17, 7:30 p.m.; 7:30 p.m. Saturday, March 18; and 2 p.m. Sunday, March 19.

Bohème Out of the Box is free (regular admission). Registration at sfopera.com/box is recommended. For complete information on San Francisco Opera’s Bohème Out of the Box, which is traveling to outdoor locations across the Bay Area this spring as part of the company’s Centennial Season, visit sfopera.com/box.

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The Jack in the Box restaurant in San Francisco’s Union Square neighborhood, which earlier this week was told by a San Francisco Superior Court judge to fix its faulty plumbing, has temporarily closed.

A note on the restaurant’s door Thursday morning said the location was “closed due to maintenance until further notice.”

The closure comes one day after The Chronicle reported an injunction had been ordered to make Jack in the Box “stop any leaks from the refrigerators and freezers up to and including unplugging the appliances” at the restaurant. The owner of the fast food restaurant did not respond to The Chronicle’s initial requests for comment.

Jack in the Box shares a building at Geary and Mason streets with Biscuits and Blues, which opened in 1995 and is one of the oldest blues venues in the city. For several months last year, the burger joint’s plumbing leaked water and feces into Biscuits and Blues, forcing the blues business to shut down. It remains closed.

The order does not specifically state which repairs need to be made at Jack in the Box. During a Jan. 29 court hearing, Gordon J. Calhoun, who represents the franchisee of Union Square’s Jack in the Box, Saeed Khan, said fixing the plumbing could require structural work on the building’s foundation, which would cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.

The two businesses have spent the last 10 months in court trying to decide who should pay to fix the plumbing. Over the course of several hearings, Biscuits and Blues claimed it was Jack in the Box’s responsibility. The fast-food restaurant owner said it was the duty of the landlord. The landlord said the operator should pay for the work.

Justin Phillips is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: jphillips@sfchronicle.com. Twitter: @JustMrPhillips

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A seemingly endless amount of drama, name-calling, lawsuits and outrage from parents and city officials made the saga of San Francisco’s school board a riveting pandemic sideshow that is about to play out at the ballot box.

A special election on Tuesday will decide the fate of three school board members, all Democrats, in a vote that has divided the famously liberal city. It also motivated many Chinese residents to vote for the first time, driven by controversial school board decisions and a batch of unearthed anti-Asian tweets.

The parents who launched the recall effort say it was born of frustration at the board’s misplaced priorities, mishandling of a budget crisis and failure to focus on the fundamental task of reopening public schools during the pandemic. Most of San Francisco’s 50,000 public school students did not see the inside of a classroom for over a year, from March 2020 until August 2021.

“It comes down to incompetence,” said Siva Raj, a father of two who helped spearhead the recall effort. “The message we want to send is, if you don’t do the job you are elected do — your primary responsibility is to educate our children — you’re fired.”

Opponents call the recall a waste of taxpayer money and a right-wing attack on liberal San Francisco that is part of a national movement to oust progressives from power. Both sides agree that San Francisco’s school board and the city itself became the focus of an embarrassing national spotlight.

Organizers say they would recall all seven board members if they could, but only three have served long enough to face a challenge: Board President Gabriela Lopez and two commissioners, Alison Collins and Faauuga Moliga.

One of the first issues to grab national attention was the board’s decision to rename 44 of the city’s public schools they said honored public figures linked to racism, sexism and other injustices. On the list were names like George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and trailblazing California Sen. Dianne Feinstein.

The renaming effort drew swift criticism for some of its targets, but also for its timing in January 2021, when public classrooms were closed because of COVID-19 restrictions. Angry parents asked why the board was focused on changing school names rather than getting children back into classrooms. The effort was also riddled with historical inaccuracies and shoddy research that drew criticisms of political correctness gone awry.

“It was so poorly executed that it made a mockery of the broader push for historical reckoning in the United States,” the San Francisco Chronicle said in an editorial endorsing the recall. “It alienated instead of educated, and invited national ridicule.”

Ultimately the plan was scrapped, after the city took the dramatic step of suing the board and school district to reopen more quickly. The lawsuit failed in court.

Then the board announced it was ending merit-based admissions at the city’s elite Lowell High School as part of a broader push for equity and inclusion. It cited “pervasive systemic racism” and a lack of diversity at Lowell, one of the country’s top public high schools, where the majority of students are Asian.

Many Asian Americans viewed the Lowell vote as a direct attack.

“It is so blatantly discriminatory against Asians,” said Ann Hsu, mother of two San Francisco high schoolers. “It is so apparent that the sole purpose is that there’s too many Asians at Lowell.”

The vote blindsided the community, and a court ultimately reversed the decision, finding in favor of a Lowell alumni group that sued the board. The group argued the board failed to place the vote on its agenda, violating California’s open meetings law.

Hsu and other parents formed a group called the Chinese/API Voter Outreach Taskforce in December, which she calls “the Chinese arm of the recall group.” Holding voter drives and spreading word in San Francisco’s Chinese-language newspapers, the group helped register over 560 new voters.

San Francisco’s soaring cost of living has pushed out families for years, leaving the city with the lowest share of children under 18 — just 13% — of America’s 100 most populous cities, according to 2020 US Census data. That made school board elections a low priority for most voters.

“That’s how these people got elected, because nobody was paying attention,” said Hsu. “But now, we’re paying attention.”

Collins has faced more criticism than her two colleagues, after recall organizers dug up 2016 tweets in which she said Asian Americans used “white supremacist” thinking to get ahead and were racist toward Black students, prompting her school board colleagues to strip Collins of her role as vice president.

Collins, who is Black, apologized for the tweets which she said were taken out of context, and then south of the school district and five fellow board members for $87 million, saying they violated her free speech rights. That suit was also tossed. Collins, who is aligned with Lopez on many issues, says the recall is part of a Republican-led effort to dismantle a progressive school board, though there is no evidence to back that claim.

Collins says she is proud of trying to bring more diversity to Lowell, which dropped its admissions test for the incoming class of fall 2021 before the decision was overturned in court. The numbers of Hispanic and Black students increased this year when the change was in place, while the numbers of Asian and white students decreased.

“We desegregated a school. Lowell now has the most diverse incoming class that it ever has had,” Collins said in an email. “I want to be on that side of history.”

Collins and Lopez call the recall a waste of time and money, noting another election is just nine months away.

“People want us to say we were wrong, we regret doing what we did, we’re sorry. And that will never be something I will do,” Lopez said recently on a local podcast, Latina Latino Latinx News.

Lopez, 31, said under her leadership the board addressed long-standing issues like school renaming and the admissions process, but they “blew up” because of racism. She called the recall of an opportunity “to bring down someone who is me,” a young Latina woman.

If a majority of voters supports recalling any of the three, the mayor would appoint their replacements to serve until the November election.

“Sadly, our school board’s priorities have often been severely misplaced,” San Francisco Mayor London Breed said in her endorsement of the recall. “Our kids must come first.”

Copyright © The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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FILE – A pedestrian walks below a sign for Dianne Feinstein Elementary School in San Francisco on Dec. 17, 2020. In a city with the lowest percentage of children of all major American cities, school board elections in San Francisco have often been an afterthought. One of the first issues to garner national attention was the board’s decision to rename 44 of the city’s public schools they said honored public figures linked to racism, sexism and injustice. On the list were names like George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and trailblazing California Sen. Dianne Feinstein.(AP Photo/Jeff Chiu, File)

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A pedestrian walks past a San Francisco Unified School District office building in San Francisco, Thursday, Feb. 3, 2022. A seemingly endless amount of drama, name-calling, lawsuits _ and outrage from parents and city officials _ made the saga of San Francisco’s school board a riveting pandemic sideshow that is about to play out at the ballot box. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)

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HAYWARD (CBS SF) – A panel van that tipped over the center partition on the San Mateo Bridge near the toll booth in Hayward is affecting traffic on the span in both directions for hours, according to authorities.

At around 3:20 p.m., CHP issued a severe traffic warning due to a traffic collision and fuel leak on CA-92 west of the San Mateo Bridge tollbooth in Hayward.

Traffic collision and fuel overflow on CA-92 heading west west of San Mateo Bridge – Toll Plaza in Hayward. Left and middle lane blocked. https://t.co/ITRwoLsl4h

– 511 SF Bay (@ 511SFbay) November 15, 2021

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A Twitter post from the KCBS traffic account stated that the truck had crossed the division into the left lanes heading west behind the toll booth.

#SanMateoBridge – A van crossed the central divide to the west, past the toll booth. Two WB left lanes are blocked. However, traffic to the east slows down from almost #FosterCity. Image rights: #Caltrans #KCBSTraffic pic.twitter.com/gyAc4sEB7S

– KCBS Radio – Der Verkehrsleiter (@KCBSAMFMTraffic) November 15, 2021

However, traffic is also slowing eastwards as people slowly drive past the accident, creating a backwater that extends almost all the way to Foster City.

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Around 4:40 p.m., a heavy tow truck arrived at the scene of the accident to move the van.

Update – #SanMateoBridge – a heavy tow truck has arrived to move a panel van that tipped over on the middle scabbard and blocked 92 WB behind the toll booth. Two WB left lanes are blocked. The traffic jams in both directions. #FosterCity #Hayward : #Caltrans #KCBSTraffic pic.twitter.com/SL9ngO4AoF

– KCBS Radio – Der Verkehrsleiter (@KCBSAMFMTraffic) November 16, 2021

Shortly before 6 p.m., CHP officials reported that the truck had been cleared and that traffic was running again.

UPDATE: Remaining delays on the CA-92 heading west west of the San Mateo Bridge – Toll Plaza in Hayward. All lanes open.

– 511 SF Bay (@ 511SFbay) November 16, 2021

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Motorists are advised to expect residual delays.

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Hertfordshire-based Michael Collins Architects have added a box-shaped, two-story addition made of copper and charred larch to a row house next to a train station in south London.

The extension and renovation was called the Jewelery Box, a nod to the way the Victorian terrace and subtle extension hide the more lively interior of the house.

Michael Collins Architects added a box-shaped extension to a Victorian terrace

“Our customers talked about the house’s jewel box quality, where a simple shape is pulled apart to reveal a more complex, lighter and more textured interior,” said Michael Collins, founder of Michael Collins Architects.

“The extension to the rear is designed as two cubic volumes that slide over a base with glass surfaces in between,” he told Dezeen.

The extension on the ground floor contains a kitchen

The studio extended the house to the rear with two blocky annexes influenced by the various ad hoc extensions to row houses in London that can often be seen on train journeys around town

On the ground floor, an annex made of oxidized copper contains a kitchen and dining area, while a smaller annex with charred larch wood above houses a bathroom on the first floor. This is crowned by a roof terrace, which is accessible from the second floor.

The annex opens to a small garden

“The blocky exterior was inspired by the simple poetry of the stacked, box-shaped, self-made ‘add-ons’ and ‘closet recirculations’ that can be seen along the back of railroad decks, reflecting the diverse lives of their residents attempting to create a highly ordered composition create, “said Collins.

“A central topic was how to create a feeling of spatial generosity in this cramped area and how to approach the steep natural embankment in the rear area.”

Gold and Inchyra Blue are combined in the kitchen

The studio clad the outside of the house in dark industrial materials to hint at the nature of the site next to the train tracks and the former owner of the house, a chimney sweep.

Satish Jassal Architects is adding an oak-framed conservatory to a renovated London townhouse

“The uses of oxidized copper and charred larch were determined by context,” said Collins. “Especially the urban memory of a famous chimney sweep from south London who lived and ran his business on the property, but also the sooty quality of the masonry along the embankment and the oxidized metal infrastructure along the way.”

The interiors contrast the dark exterior

In contrast to the restrained exterior, the interiors were designed in light colors, with inchyra blue cabinets and surfaces combined with golden back walls in the kitchen.

“A flush panel water element hides utility space, pantries and a toilet wrapped around the interior walls of the kitchen to create a sense of immersion and continuity with the trained plants lining the garden walls,” added Collins.

The studio has also renovated the main house

Overall, the architect is of the opinion that the house suits its location and wouldn’t make sense anywhere else.

“We hoped the project would be as idiosyncratic as its surroundings,” he said.

“The project grew out of the location and two very unique customers. These factors have shaped its orientation, size and materiality, and we think that it would not make sense at any other location.”

Jewelery Box was placed on the longlist in the Small Interior category of the Dezeen Awards 2020. This category was won by the Sim-Plex Design Studio Four Bedroom Smart Home in Hong Kong.

Photography is by Jacob Milligan.

The post Michael Collins Architects provides Jewelry Field extension to London dwelling appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

The Jack in the Box restaurant in the Union Square neighborhood of San Francisco, which was ordered by a San Francisco Supreme Court judge earlier this week to fix its malfunctioning lines, has been temporarily closed.

A notice on the door of the restaurant on Thursday morning stated that the location was “closed for maintenance until further notice”.

The closure comes a day after The Chronicle reported that an injunction had been issued to Jack in the Box in the restaurant to “prevent leaks from refrigerators and freezers, including pulling out the power cord.” The owner of the fast food restaurant didn’t respond to The Chronicle’s initial comments.

Jack in the Box shares a building on Geary and Mason Streets with Biscuits and Blues, which opened in 1995 and is one of the oldest blues venues in town. Last year, the burger joint in Biscuits and Blues leaked water and feces for several months, forcing the blues business to a standstill. It stays closed.

The order does not explicitly state which repairs must be carried out by Jack in the Box. During a January 29 court hearing, Gordon J. Calhoun, who represents Union Square’s Jack in the Box franchisee Saeed Khan, said repairing the plumbing could require structural work on the building’s foundation that would cost hundreds of thousands of dollars .

The two companies have spent the past 10 months in court deciding who should pay to repair the plumbing. During multiple hearings, Biscuits and Blues claimed it was Jack in the Box’s responsibility. The fast food restaurant owner said it was the landlord’s duty. The landlord said the operator should pay for the work.

Justin Phillips is a contributor to the San Francisco Chronicle. Email: jphillips@sfchronicle.com. Twitter: @JustMrPhillips

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