San Francisco AIA design winners announced
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Tea houses that cantilever over an oak-studded hillside, a live-work prefab that’s supremely energy-efficient, a Victorian exterior that yields to a most modern interior -- these are among the recent winners of the annual design awards handed out by the San Francisco chapter of the American Institute of Architects.
We’ve got a peek at some of the residential honorees. Here they are, in no particular order, with descriptions passed along by the AIA:
Project: Tea Houses, Silicon Valley, pictured above and at right
Architect: Swatt Miers Architects
Category: Excellence in Architecture
Description: “Viewed from afar or viewed from within, the tea houses are works of art living amongst the trees and grasses of their native California hillside.’ The firm describes the projects as steel and glass pavilions built under live oaks and ‘hovering like a lantern over the natural landscape.’
To see more AIA San Francisco award winners, keep reading ...
Project: Honighaus, San Francisco, above and at right
Architect: Ogrydziak/Prillinger Architects
Category: Interior architecture
Description: With views of the Golden Gate and Alcatraz, this 3,500-square-foot house ‘thematizes the tension between its contemporary interior and historic exterior. The interior is a marriage of crisp, fluid geometries with modern interpretations of ornament and rich materiality.... The facade was restored to its original Edwardian austerity, and painted a monochrome gray to abstract its crisp restrained ornament. The roof was reworked and clad in zinc-coated copper to match the facade gray, resulting in a quiet and unified exterior that participates innocently in the contextual street fabric.’
Photos from Ogrydziak/Prillinger Architects
Project: L Residence, Omaha, Neb., pictured above and at right.
Architect: Min/Day
Category: Interior Architecture
Description: This cheery and colorful apartment interior with laser-cut details “occupies the top floor of an 11-story Art Deco-era hotel that has recently been converted to apartment living with mix-use commercial tenant spaces on the ground floor.... This apartment for a filmmaker reinterprets the use of poché to support Baroque theatricality and proposes a cinematic architecture of sequences and points of view.’
Photo credits: Top photo, Paul Crosby, blue detail Larry Gawel
Project: MacLeod/Morand Residence, Albany, Calif., pictured above and at right
Architect: MacLeod Design & Construction
Category: Energy and Sustainability
Description: ”This residential project is an exemplary model for a modest renovation/addition of a small, undistinguished, and inefficient existing Bay Area home....
‘Resource-efficient materials selected for good indoor air quality, a well insulated and air-sealed building envelope with high-performance windows, a solar thermal system that provides 80% of hot water needs, and a solar electric system that offsets 100% of electricity use made this project a winner.... A deciduous veil, set in front of the glass, offers seasonal change, controlling western summer sun. It conjures up childhood memories of lying on the ground, looking up into a tree canopy, dappled sunlight peeking through.”
Photos from MacLeod Design & Construction
Project: Costa Rica House, Santa Theresa, Costa Rica, pictured above and at right
Architect: Stanley Saitowitz/Natoma Architects
Category: Excellence in Architecture
Description: “The house is a series of layered screens with only the slightest interior. Bi-fold pipe screens provide security and shade; the porch offers dappled and filtered light; and a wall of sliding glass below and open mesh above offers a place to gather. This vacation home encourages casual and easy living where inside and outside, wet and dry, pool and beach all merge in the blur of the jungle.”
Photos from Stanley Saitowitz/Natoma Architects
Project: Diamond Project, San Francisco, pictured above and at right
Architect: Terry & Terry Architecture
Category: Excellence in Architecture
Description: The project is sited on an upslope and is composed of simple materials.
“Concrete walls run parallel along the side lot lines, forming the sidewalls of the house and continuing beyond to contain a protected garden....
‘Strategic gaps or fissures were formed between roof and walls to illuminate the walls with natural light.’
The result: ‘transparency between indoor and outdoor spaces.”
Photos from Terry & Terry Architecture
Project: 1020 Pine St., San Francisco, above and at right
Architect: Kennerly Architecture & Planning
Category: Excellence in Architecture
Description: This five-story Nob Hill building stands out from the Edwardian homes at its sides.
It embraces sustainable design strategies and “draws upon the spirit of San Francisco’s fine-grained urbanism to create eight luminous dwellings and a contemporary rejoinder to retrograde notions of context....
‘Rigorously planned dwellings draw daylight and views through prismatic volumes of clear and fritted glass.”
Photo credits: Exterior by Tim Griffith; interior by Owen Kennerly
Project: Russian Hill Penthouse, San Francisco, above and at right
Architect: Kuth/Ranieri Architects
Category: Interior architecture
Description: “Vistas of the city, the bay, Golden Gate Bridge, Alcatraz Island and surrounding mountains unfold in all directions, continually transformed by environmental factors of fog, tide, and sunlight. The elongated proportions of the floor-plate are coordinated with the organization of program, controlling the sequence to both discover and experience the view. Domestic functions inform the strategy to establish relationships with the specific landscapes they foreground.”
Photos from Kuth/Ranieri Architects
Project: Lancaster NZE Live/Work Townhome, Oakland, pictured above and at right
Architect: Dan Smith & Associates Architects
Category: Energy and Sustainability
Description: Assembled from four factory-built modules, the town home impressed the jury with a ‘comprehensive design of a very high performance building envelope, efficient mechanical systems and renewable energy production.’
The result: ‘a modest-sized live/work space rated to perform at net zero energy ... an exemplary model for multi-family housing.’
Photos from Dan Smith & Associates Architects
Not pictured: Greenwich Village Townhouse, New York Architect: Melander Architects
Category: Interior architecture
Description: This exquisite townhouse preserves the spirit of the original structure while ‘defining a contemporary interpretation of vertical living intrinsic to this urban housing type. Because most of the original details had been removed in previous renovations, the design team had the freedom to explore simple expressions that would bridge the historic and contemporary lives of the building. Significant elements such as the façade, the elaborate parquet floors, and the sculptural stairs are preserved and juxtaposed with the crisp volumes and modern details that define each space. The jury commented: This livable space was well-edited and carefully considered.”
-- Roselle Curwen
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