CORNER IN SAN FRANCISCO

This is one of my favorite projects. It sits on a corner in San Francisco’s Bernal Heights and is about 25’ wide by 25’ long with two floors and a basement. My clients bought this property when it was a forgotten, weed strewn lot with a tiny, termite infested, collapsing wood shack at the rear. One of the owners was a health care worker, medical professor, and avid country banjo player. He was anxious to get out of a rented apartment above an Italian deli in the Mission, tear down the shack, and cultivate a full garden of vegetables and flowers. His partner was a painter and art professor. He needed studio space.  

We placed the new house up at the front where it could complete the row of small homes along the down sloped, front street. The house would help the neighborhood turn a corner so to speak.  

Instead of entering from the front, we inserted a gate along the side street that entered directly into the garden. From there, you could step up onto a wooden terrace overlooking the garden, a terrace that itself spilled out through wide doors from the main interior of the home. This was a single 25’ by 25’ room containing the kitchen, sitting and dining areas.  

And in the corner of that room, a compact stair winds upstairs to a master bedroom suite looking down into the garden, to a music room that twists for a better view of the Pacific Ocean in the distance, and to a painting studio set as an overhanging box at the corner of the home and the street. Going downward, these stairs lead to a two car garage that now provides more studio space. The exterior colors have become more passionate as my clients update it every few years..