Creek House

Set amidst a volcanic boulder field in a pine and fir forest, Creek House is a family retreat that inhabits an existing outcrop clearing at the edge of the spring fed Martis Creek. Near the base of Lookout Mountain at Northstar California Resort, the house is conceived in plan as three directional bars that slide between and alongside the boulders and trees. The largest contains the main living areas and sleeping quarters. A margin sized bar houses the entry and support spaces and connects the third bar that contains a tandem, drive-through garage to the house. A south facing, 140-foot long, insulated concrete wall demarks the spaces longitudinally and situates the house in the mountainous terrain.

Lookout House

The building site had a significant influence on the design for this house. Layered with intense geologic history at the base of a three-million-year-old volcano, the site is a north-facing 20-degree slope with equal parts refuge and prospect at 6,300 feet above mean sea level. Consisting of volcanic sediment from ancient flows and strewn with boulders up to 15 feet in diameter, the site is in an open stand of second-growth Jeffrey Pine and White Fir trees. The vertical, plumb lines of the tree trunks, stripped bare from years of deep snow fall, reach for the light. Standing upright at an angle to the slope, they provide a constant reference to the perpendicular horizon in the distance. The harsh winters leave the ground sparse yet partially covered with a mat of pine needles and cones. Large waist-high clusters of manzanita group together and climb the slope in an organic, opportunistic pattern.

Big Barn

A San Francisco family of four asked us to create a retreat from their urban lifestyle, reusing the footprint of an existing 1950s ranch house in Glen Ellen, California, while building in a consistent way with the area’s rolling hills and agricultural structures.

Glen Ellen has many barn-like houses that confusingly mash up two design vocabularies, pasting residential-style overhangs and fenestration on barn forms in a kitschy blend. In contrast, this 3,900-square-foot house, dubbed the “Big Barn,” draws authentic inspiration from the site’s existing Tack Barn, which we had previously renovated into a bunk house. A simple, rectangular, two-story form emerged with an asymmetrical gabled roof. The shorter side of the roof faces the southwest sun and reduces heat gain to the structure. Fenestration is limited to this exposure as well and is organized as thin, full-height ventilation shutters that reference traditional barn building.

The entry, a larger version of the vertical slit elements, is recessed for shading. The fireplace and chimney, foreign to the barn typology, are displaced from the structure with glazed joints. The east side is more open to the view and morning sun.

Tack Barn

In the early 1900s, writer Jack London made his permanent home in Glen Ellen, California, a less populated part of the California wine country 50 miles north of San Francisco. Drawn by the land, London believed in the redemptive qualities of rural life. As the first step in creating a similar kind of retreat in Glen Ellen for themselves, a San Francisco family and repeat client asked us to reclaim a 1950s tack barn as living space. The family wanted to stay in the barn on weekends in order to get the lay of the land for future planning and constructions.

Burnt Cedar

This is a full-time beach house for a car passionate family of four situated across from Burnt Cedar Beach in Incline Village, Nevada on the north shore of Lake Tahoe. Prior to being pulled up the hill to flumes and rails destined for Virginia City, logs were staged here as the mountains around the lake shore were logged during the silver mining years of the 1860s.

Miner Road

The clients are a couple of environmental scientists who, along with their two sons, relocated from the Oakland Hills to the warmer climate of Orinda. Their commitment to sustainability, including a request for net-zero energy performance annually, was evident in their thinking throughout the design process. A three-bedroom program began as a remodel of a 1954 ranch house at the foot of a hill next to a seasonal creek. After finding the existing structure and soils to be unsuitable, the direction settled on reusing the existing footprint under the shade of a Valley Oak that had grown up close to the original house. The surviving portion of the original house is the fireplace which was wrapped in concrete and utilized for structural support. This made additional grading unnecessary and allowed the new house to maintain the same intimate relation to the old oak.

Shoreline

Shoreline is essentially a cast-in-place concrete box designed to withstand a harsh location on the north shore of Lake Tahoe. The fire resistive and maintenance free shell builds a pavilion-like mezzanine plan in section with a two-story living space on the beach. The mezzanine houses bedrooms and a family room that overlooks both the living space and on grade garage below. An underground garage is accessed via car elevator and will store the client’s car collection.

Spaced and acoustically insulated native cedar boards wrap walls and ceilings softening the soundscape in the concrete and glass house. Enhanced insulation and glazing systems combined with radiantly heated floors and insulated concrete mass walls mitigate potential daily temperature swings of sixty degrees. Full height vertical slits in the closed concrete walls facing the neighbors are angled toward the lake to provide light and view along with privacy. The two-story form extends to the south and east shading the interior from sun in summer yet welcoming it in winter.

Squaw Valley Ski Cabin

Built prior to the 1960 Winter Olympics and wedged into a granite outcrop on Sunnyside ski run at Squaw Valley USA, a long abandoned ski cabin site is planned to be rebuilt and shared by four families. The topography drops from a narrow private road at a 40-degree angle and does not allow space for a garage. A pedestrian steel grate bridge will span the drop-off to allow level entry directly to the main living space. The elevated floor will float above the boulders at roughly the annual snow depth of twenty feet. A steel box form fits precisely within the available building envelope three dimensionally. With steel sash windows, the cabin will withstand harsh winters and the threat of wildfire with zero maintenance or refinishing. Access to the ski run is built by a steel stair that is gradually buried by the winter snow ultimately providing access directly to the lower level ski entry. Squaw Creek is furnished with glacially smoothed granite boulders and beckons after a soak in the hot tub under the stilted house.

Open to the south sun with a covered deck, the form is peppered with minimal openings to other cardinal points to afford privacy due to the close proximity of the neighbors. Prospect from this site is animated by skiers flying by on the Gold Coast Funitel as they make their way up the mountain.

Reuse of the wood beams utilizes some of the embodied energy of the old cabin and references past experiences through historical markings left from previous connections. The 2,400 square foot, four bedroom cabin sports a full roof deck accessed via ladder. A portion of the deck will house solar panels. Further energy upgrades include triple glazed windows, an enhanced insulation package and radiantly heated floors. At 6,200 feet in elevation, nights are cool which eliminates the need for mechanical cooling.

Game Zone

“A larger place for the family to engage in fun and games together connected by a bridge to our house,” was the request by our client. The resultant project takes disciplined form in a two story, south facing rectangular barn-like space. The flexible oversized room for games is flanked on each end with yoga/exercise to the east and a screened outdoor cooking and dining porch to the west. It stacks over two private bedrooms below that open north to the forest.

Stretched along the east-west solar axis and facing the sun, the main space opens fully with sliding glass doors. The expanse of glass emits solar energy in winter to a heat sink of basalt floors. Horizontally coursed, an acoustically insulated cedar screen will soften the sounds of laughter coming from the new family hang out. The realized glass bridge transforms moods through total immersion in the landscape in route to the new space.

Happy Valley Road House

Stretched along a south facing hillside in San Francisco’s East Bay, this permanent residence for a family of four is planned to allow extended visits by family and friends. Arrival by car winds below the house up the slope to a concealed courtyard between the house and hillside. A gradually unfolding entry experience weaves its way back toward the light and view to Mount Diablo through a concrete and glass one story main floor living space. A cedar rain screen clads a second story of family bedrooms.

Energy efficiency is considered via planned 10kw photovoltaic array, geothermal based hydronic heating and cooling systems, and upgraded efficiency levels of glazing, insulation and mechanical systems.