This home is about environment: its connectedness to its site, its quality and natural building components built to last, its state-of-the-art climate control, and its small energy footprint.
This home is about community: its gathering and retreating spaces for family, its hospitality to the neighborhood, and its demonstration of better technologies.
The house is sited to create generous yet intimate outdoor spaces that celebrate the dramatic landscape and make place for living. The modern forms of the house are punctuated with large openings and balconies and projecting roof eaves that mediate between interior and exterior. Interior flowing spaces are anchored by detailed elements like the skylit stairs and the kitchen.
Panels imbedded in the ceilings provide radiant heating and cooling powered by electric heat pumps; the water heater is hybrid electric; interior air is filtered and humidity controlled. Photovoltaic arrays and Tesla Powerwalls power the house.
Photos: Adam Potts | Photography
Contractor: Buzzer 9
Windows and Doors: Amari
Kitchen cabinets: Henrybuilt
Photovoltaic panels and Tesla Powerwalls: American Solar
The land is unique with a powerful direct relationship to Mt. Tamalpais and Marin County Open Space. The project opens toward the natural undeveloped vistas. The forms of the house are fitted to the land.
Natural wood siding, lime plaster walls and roof terraces further integrate the house into the landscape.
Trees and windows and eaves are strategically arranged to provide privacy between neighbors and shelter from the sun and also open the interior to views and connection to outside spaces.
Photo: Adam Potts | Photography and Markoff Fullerton Architects
Our clients liked their small 1940s home but wanted to update and expand it. We preserved many of the "bones" of the house and strategically edited and added to create clean, open modern spaces that capture views and light and make connections between inside and outside. It was a great collaboration with clients who participated fully in the design process and contributed great furnishings and art that bring the architecture to life.
Photos: Paul Dyer
Contractor: GGD, Inc.
The design of project is a response to the topography, vegetation and climate. Parallel concrete walls delineate the grain of the land. Zinc-clad roof plates rise from sloping plains then fold to shape living spaces below. Long obliquely cut eaves provide shelter from extreme sun and snow and frame views in four directions. The group of buildings sits near the crest of a hill close by a vibrant creek. By working with the grain of the land, their orientation minimizes their prominence on the landscape while optimizing solar exposure.
Special honor and challenge to keep the childhood magic and create a new iteration as the house becomes home to the next generation.
Photos: Adam Potts | Photography
Contractor: Kerr Construction, Inc.
Windows and Doors: Blomberg Windows
Cabinetry: DeWils
The design of this house transforms a 1950’s midcentury modern single story hillside home into a secluded retreat. It is a gently sloping private site with dramatic views of Mt. Tamalpais and Richardson Bay.
The goal of the design was to connect with nature from every room and create a dialog between the quiet simplicity of the architecture, the close textures of the landscape and the distant views and to craft a balance between looking inward and looking outward.
Photo credits: Brooke Duthie Photography and Markoff Fullerton Architects
This project is the second phase of our original Alta, WY project. The home distills the elements of the original project into a smaller home for the next generation of the family. The house is sited to maintain a balance between separation and community and to align with the grain of the topography and views to the Tetons.
This home has views to San Francisco and Mount Tamalpais yet enjoys its own private canyon up close. We are updating the house and adding a penthouse keeping the original mid-century modern elements. We and the landscape team are creating a mid-century style landscape that transitions to a natural meadow below and flows into the house above.
We are adding PV solar panels and batteries and upgrading the building envelope, appliances and HVAC systems eliminating all natural gas usage making this project 100% electric.
The project is currently under construction. These images are computer renderings created as part of our design process.
Renderings: Atom Studios
Landscape team:
April Philips Design Works, Inc.
John Greenley and Associates
Our client asked us to expand a small cottage; to add as little new space as possible to accommodate her needs but make it feel much larger, make it wholly non-toxic, energy efficient, filled with daylight, and to maximize the quality and connection to the lot’s outdoor spaces for gathering and edible gardens.
The house was featured on the Build It Green Homes Tour in Marin and Sonoma Counties. Build It Green chose the project for its Best Home Renovation Award and the hundreds of tour participants gave it their People’s Choice Award for all the tour homes in Marin. The house was also featured in the article “Eco-friendly and Stylish Too,” Marin IJ.
https://www.marinij.com/2007/09/20/eco-friendly-and-stylish-too/
The project is a modern interpretation of traditional forms, scale and materials, providing our client with an open plan and clean aesthetic while keeping the rhythm and scale of the neighborhood intact. This renovation and addition urban-infill features many sustainable elements including significant reuse of existing construction, use of non-toxic materials throughout, roof-top PV and solar thermal and an edible garden with a clothesline sculpture.
The original lower level was added to and transformed into a painting studio. The use of raw materials such as concrete, raw structural steel and stained plywood and its connection to the street and garden, give it a grounded quality that is a deliberate counterpoint to the more abstract, light-connected, view-connected quality of the upper level which is for living and music listening. The upper and lower levels are connected spatially and visually by void spaces and steel columns that project up and down through the upper floor. The ceilings of the highest reaches are illuminated by skylights.
The original rambling, inwardly focused ranch style house was reinterpreted as two conceptually solid wings framing and opening up to a sequence of three void spaces: entry courtyard, glass-walled living room and pool terrace. These "landscape" spaces visually and spatially connect the house to its site at the edge the Arroyo Seco.