exterior contractor
Taking in
the
View
Ian Umeda
A San Francisco bay area home opens its
walls to the panorama surrounding it
Homeowners wanted to regain the yard
space lost to the 1,200-sq.-ft. addition, so
a deck overhanging a cliff was designed
to create outdoor living space.
By Laurie Banyay
When the owners of a 1950s
mid-century modern ranch
house wanted to update the
space, taking advantage of the
home's biggest asset — the
panoramic view of the San
Francisco Bay — was of the
utmost importance.
The Belmont, Calif., home
is part of a relaxed suburban
neighborhood situated along
a cul-de-sac. Although it's a
single-family home, it has the
distinct feel of a chic, loft living
space, thanks to design work by
Zeitgeist Design, San Francisco.
36
July 2013
QR
Florian Speier and his design
team initially presented a proposal the clients loved. "At the
next meeting, however, they said
to forget about it, start again and
see if we could come up with
something even better," Speier
recalls. "We were very surprised
about that. They explained that
is what they do when they buy
shoes, too. They try to find the
best shoes and when they do,
they look again to see if they can
find something even better. So we
restarted the design process to
come up with an alternate solu-
ForResidentialPros.com
tion. It wasn't as good as the first
one, and then they were satisfied
they really had what would work
best for them. We went ahead
and built it [to the original plans]
with very minimal changes from
that point on."
San Francisco is a prime
earthquake zone and, as such,
buildings in the area must meet
rigid structural requirements.
This poses certain challenges
to houses like this that have
an entire side with a dedicated
view. "We want to maximize the
glass area, but in this location
you need a lot of solid walls,"
Speier explains. "You need walls
on all sides of the house. From
the beginning of this design, we
had to give the impression there
was glass everywhere but do it
in a way we have some areas to
get that solid wall in." Speier
also wanted to avoid steel frames
because of project cost and also
to avoid the thermal bridging
steel framing would have created.
The three-bedroom house
was about 1,800 sq. ft. The addition was 1,200 sq. ft. and used
some existing space, as well as