There’s an excitement about newness. Moving into a new space, with fresh paint, unmarred counters, crisp door frames. The shininess of a countertop says “new,” not just as in “unblemished,” but “made just for you.” It says “this will not have to be repaired or replaced for a long time.” There is an excitement about […]
My new video on bringing natural light into a house form without side windows.
Important as color is, it sometimes blinds us to form. “I see in color, so I shoot in color,” Jay Maisel once told my uncle. But if what you want to convey is shape and volume, doing away with any distracting hues can be the best tool. Photo here is by Clyde Butcher.
It is as perilous to design a prominent building in the giddiness of a tech-fueled economy as it is to go grocery shopping when you’re hungry. You may find yourself with buyers remorse the morning after. This could easily be the case with the New Mission Theater condos – a carnival’s fun house aesthetic on both […]
Norwegian high-pitched roofs, Dutch gables, Russian Orthodox domes, Spanish colonial facades — scores of newcomers have visited upon San Francisco’s skyline the architecture of their homelands. These were built by immigrants, for immigrants, and evinced authentic culture. In contrast, it is downright disingenuous when an institution dons an ethnic pastiche of whatever culture happens to […]
Most architects just throw out something in hacienda style when they want to reflect the local culture here in the Mission…
I like deconstructivist architecture. I like it the same way, I think, that I’d like a night out on the town with Lady Gaga. But at the end of the evening, I’d rather return to a home like an Audrey Hepburn in that simple black dress. Home is, more than anything else, our place of […]
All the gold on this façade was done with one and a half packages of leaf, or about $22. Amazingly thin stuff at around 7-millionths of an inch—the same as gold plate—it’s thin enough sunlight can pass through.
“All discord [is] harmony not understood,” noted Alexander Pope. Discovering harmony in architecture, in what at first looks like discord, lends a wonderful richness and intrigue. Take this house on Vallejo Street. Study the ostensible jumble of unaligned windows and they’ll slowly reveal the internal layout of rooms and stair behind the façade. A similar work without the underlying […]
Bertrand Russell on conformity, from “Furniture and the Ego”: “Tolstoy describes somewhere a newly married couple who are giving their first evening party; when it is over, they congratulate each other on the fact that it has been exactly like anyone else’s evening party. Those to whom this is the highest ambition evidently fear contempt […]