Given a 900 sf dilipidated cottage on a double-wide steeply sloping lot, the client - a single male in the film industry - gave John Maniscalco/ Architecture a straight-forward charge. Working within a tight construction budget ($225/sf), utilize as much of the existing house as possible to construct a 3500 sf single family residence for his future spouse and family that encapsulates a sense of “urban oasis”.
The tight urban sites of San Francisco typically preclude opportunities for sculptural form, but the width of this site and the dramatic views from the rear sloping portion of the site created potential for openness of space and framing of views at multiple levels which provides relief from the typical urban block massing.
As designed, the project envelops the existing house on three sides, while opening structured slots of view and light to anchor the house to the site. These zones of light and change in materiality signal paths of movement, changes in scale, function, and orientation to views.
The entry sequence travels up a cantilevered steel stair, beginning the passage out of the urban world, through the entry gate into a protected courtyard open to the sky. Upon entering the house, one travels across a structural glass bridge illuminated by a continuous bank of skylights overhead. This bridge serves the dual function of acting as a transitional zone to the tranquil living spaces beyond and as a mechanism for daylighting the light-stranded lower hallway below. Beyond the compressed scale of the entry sequence, one steps into the expanded scale and city views of the main living and dining areas, which maximize their views with butt-jointed continuous glass walls. At the base of the interior stairs, the lower skylit hall gathers three bedrooms, two baths, laundry and garage around a central hall with river rocks, bamboo flooring and daylighting from the glass bridge above.
With an obvious nod to both Pierre Koenig and the Case Study Houses, the exterior of the house utilizes the steel structural frame at the perimeter of the structure. This frame allows for the erosion of the massing of the house while maintaining contextual ties to adjacent structures and continuity of the urban street in the front and dramatic framing of distant views in the rear. The infill of this frame system with stucco, Alaskan Yellow Cedar and copper panels provides a richness and depth within the composition and a scale that ties it back to the neighboring houses.