My Favorite San Francisco House
My favorite house in San Francisco, at least from the outside, is a small single story house built in the classical style. It is a small cottage, built as a classical temple. It is dwarfed by the neighboring buildings which were built years after it was built. I suspect that when it was built (circa […]
What Does Your City Flag Look Like?
For something different – a TED talk by Roman Mars, about the design of city flags. (Just skip the ad that’s attached at the start.) Not only is this talk interesting, entertaining, and informative, it is also a great talk about design. Talking about design is hard to do. Roman Mars does it on the […]
Project in Progress: San Francisco Legalization
The project to legalize an existing secondary dwelling at the garage level of a house in San Francisco is getting closer to be completed. The permit was issued in May. So we are three months into construction and it’s starting to look pretty good. This project is being built as part of the City program […]
Project in Progess: San Francisco Foundation Replacement and New Unit
San Francisco has a program, the purpose of which is to encourage landlords to improve the earthquake safety of their properties. If a landlord voluntarily performs a seismic upgrade to a building meeting certain specific criteria, the City allows the landlord to add one or more rental units to the building, waiving many of the […]
Project in Progress: San Leandro Update
The other day my client for the project in San Leandro texted me a photograph. It made me smile. This is the view from the back hall through the kitchen through the new opening between the kitchen and dining room, through the dining room to the window and out to the front of the house. […]
Project in Progress: Oakland 4
The project to update a long neglected mid-century modern house in the Oakland hills is coming along. At what feels like a snail’s pace, but moving along none the less. In this post we’ll look at a nearly completed bathroom, a detail that makes my eye twitch, and a little bit of the history of […]
Project in Progress: Oakland Remodel 3
One of the projects in the office at the moment is the remodel of mid-century house in the Oakland hills. I have written about this project before here and here. The construction is moving along. Here are some photographs of the construction in progress. The Master Bedroom is small, but bright and sunny. We are […]
Project in Progress: San Leandro Remodel
A couple of weeks ago I visited the project in San Leandro which is currently under construction. I took some pictures and realized that this project provides an example of a principal of design I call “Small Changes Can Make A Big Difference”. In this case, opening up the wall between the Dining Room and the […]