What happens to architecture when it lives in a city that is allergic to change?  It turns inward and develops a hidden life.

This single-family house is located in one of the most archetypal neighborhoods in San Francisco:  Telegraph Hill, a place so in love with its history and charm it strenuously resists contemporary development.  Powerful neighborhood groups multiply the difficulties already imposed by the conservative San Francisco Planning Code, and effectively stall any project that fails to comply with their historicist vision of the city.  In this case, further obstacles included a shallow lot, and a neighbor who wanted to preserve a view shed that cuts into the already compact buildable envelope.  Fortunately, the owners, an artist and an entrepreneur with two grown children, are tenacious and resourceful in the face of multiple challenges.

We all recognized the house would need to wear a mask to hide the architectural freedoms within.  The mask – in this case, the facade – conforms to society’s idea of what is appropriate while all that cannot be expressed in civil life takes up residence behind it.  Here, the facade achieves a strategic blankness by abstracting the ubiquitous San Francisco bay window.  The form is realized with a dense stained cedar screen that allows a glimmer of the internal complexity behind.

Within, the house has a split personality.  Cramming the extensive program into the small buildable envelope resulted in this dualism:  the efficient stacking of vertical circulation on one side, and varied horizontal living space on the other.  A skylight paired with a mirrored chasm at the ground floor emphasizes this split by creating a rift between these two zones.  The two zones have different characters, underscored by the exclusive use of raw materials on one side while the other side is drenched in pastel blue paint.  Each personality reflects a distinct spatial dynamic:  fluid, varied extension in a horizontal plane (plan) versus vertical and vertiginous space (section).

Some amount of repression is essential to civilization – a compromise between the individual’s instincts and society.  In the Hidden House, the mask converts these disparate sensibilities into unified, civil behavior.

Team:
Architect: OPA - Ogrydziak Prillinger
Photography: Hufton + Crow, Mika Sperling