With a façade protected as “Architecturally Significant” and an atypically long zero-lot-line building footprint extending into the rear setbacks, the constraints became deciding design factors.
The solution maintains and restores the historic façade, while adding an additional floor, set back from the street, which utilizes an abstraction of the cornice and fenestration patterns of the existing house. The introduction of a two-story atrium (which is open to the sky) provides the house with an unexpected core – one which brings the exterior into the very center of the urban dwelling. This new center becomes the organizing gesture around which the other spaces of the house are gathered, partaking of the light, air, and landscape (both earth and sky) that this protected garden provides. Utilizing both the transparent and reflective qualities, the glass cube acts to both define each distinct space and extend it. The Jarrah stair, which is framed by the cube, cantilevers from the wall, adding to the transparency and lightness. A wall of Sapele cabinets transforms to respond to the changing requirements of each space, while maintaining the scale of the larger space.
The house maintains an appropriately formal programmatic element – a library – in the room behind the preserved façade. The dining room and living room flank the garden, which a large kitchen opens on two sides to the rear garden and views to the north. Above, the cube is surrounded by two bedrooms and a master bedroom suite with a large rear deck. The lower level features a media room/guest suite, exercise room, laundry, and a three-car garage.

- John Maniscalco

The Cube House & John Maniscalco Architecture was awarded San Francisco Magazine’s ‘Small Firms, Great Projects’ in 2006.  It was also awarded a place in A San Francisco Home Tour, a yearly event in which the best residential projects are displayed to the public, hosted by AIA San Francisco and The Center For Architecture + Design.