Yellow cedar

An intimate study in scale, this compact 450 square-foot cabin makes the most of its remote site on a forested bluff overlooking the water in the San Juan Islands. Consisting essentially of a single room, the wood-framed cabin offers flexible space as a painting studio or a guesthouse. The back of the structure gently nestles into the hillside bounded by existing trees and boulders, enclosing a micro kitchen and bathroom. The front side cantilevers out over the slope, its open studio space circumscribed on three sides by floor-to-ceiling glass walls. The front wall breaks the square with a “magic” window that angles out to a point, opening the cabin to sweeping views of the water and islands beyond, along with creating an inspir... More

The clients of The Sanctuary, recent empty-nesters planning ahead to retirement, hoped to downsize and simplify in the design of their new Palo Alto home. When the clients purchased the property, an old wooden fence across the front yard and original house closed off the site from the street. Behind this rough and aged presentation however was an urban refuge of lush vegetation throughout the deep lot. This sense of discovery served as the original inspiration for the design of the house and directed both architect and client to its culmination.    The proximity of the downtown Palo Alto area by foot and bike was fundamental to the clients’ decision to purchase this lot, and their belief in building to a higher density in... More

We’ve created a modern farmhouse that extends into the natural prairie landscape, providing a humanistic experience in natural light underneath vaulted ceilings. The interior experience is intended to mirror the exterior feeling.   Our client purchased 19 acres of land in Southern Wisconsin with the goal of spending their time surrounded by the native prairie that they themselves had rehabilitated. The couple wanted a single-story home that would not dominate the restored prairie, but rather enable the interior experience to be an extension of it. We conceived the project as a modern farmhouse, a building typology centered around the outdoors, to meet the needs of the client. The residence consists of three vaulted shapes nestl... More

A native NW landscape and two urban cabins create retreat in the city, this project is the reclamation of a 1/10 acre property and upgrading of a tiny 720 s.f.bungalow into a modern 1860 s.f.refuge.  Two modern cabins house separate purposes, one is primarily social with kitchen, dining, guest quarters, lower level entertainment cantina, and utility functions.  The second is a private loft-like sleep/work studio.  A transparent covered outdoor passage connects the two structures, and benefits from the comfortable year-round maritime climate of the Pacific Northwest.A 10 minute drive from downtown Seattle, this home inextricably links landscape and architecture, editing neighbor views to create a secluded home retreat in the c... More

This project is conceived as a series of concrete retaining walls and escarpments that traverse and cascade down a steeply sloped site. The building strategy is to deploy a series of straight walls that act as “jetties” into the landscape and respond as a counterforce to the topography. Hovering above and anchored to these concrete site walls is the “House” proper, a “primitive” conceived and constructed as a series of smooth extruded volumes of differing lengths. Symbolically and strategically, the first of these “boxes” presents a gable-front facade to the street and helps conceal the scale of the overall house beyond. The second container-box rotates 90 degrees and runs parallel to the street and site walls. The perpendicular orientation... More

The owners of this San Francisco residence brought on Ryan Leidner Architecture to re-imagine an original house from 1941 in order to make the most of its expansive views of the city. Due to strict zoning requirements, the footprint of the house could not be expanded nor a deck added to better enjoy the view. In response to these limits, the second story living room space was re-conceived as an outdoor space, with a wall of floor-to-ceiling sliding glass doors that open and dissolve the interior/exterior separation. Working within the existing footprint, the architect opened up the top floor by removing walls separating the kitchen and the living room, and reconfigured the 1st floor to accommodate a new master suite. In the new ki... More

Located in downtown Portland, the new Karl Miller Center is uniquely integrated with the city’s rich network of public open spaces and diverse urban uses. Questioning the full-block archetype that dominates the typical 200’ x 200’ city block of Portland, the building design appears as two distinct structures sharing a city block - the renovated existing building, a 100,000sf 1970’s structure retrofitted with a metal panel facade system broken up by an irregular composition of punched windows, and a new dynamic, shifting 45,000sf addition, clad in regionally sourced Alaskan Yellow Cedar. This approach, coupled with a series of terracing external green spaces and new circulation pathways linking the urban center, local parks, transportation s... More

Intended to be as light on the land as possible, this weekend retreat is sited to have a minimal footprint while maximizing spectacular views of Tomales Bay in Northern California. The orientation and layout of the structure maximizes energy savings on cooling and heating, which is provided with a radiant floor system controlled by smart thermostat. Large windows and an open courtyard help increase natural light and allow for panoramic vistas.Before construction, the two-acre site had been left vacant since it was severely damaged in the Inverness Ridge Fire of 1995. Native trees, shrubs, ground cover and meadows were included in the master plan to regenerate and restore the land.The owners brought their children to camp on-site for years b... More

Completed in the winter of 2016, this modified shipping container is our new office. The practice was formed in 2005 to focus on small, well-crafted buildings. After working in my home office with one staff member for many years, we decided to expand the practice (a little).Lifestyle is important to me and my wife, so the decision was made to expand to the back yard rather than to a remote commercial space. The goal was to have the benefits of working from home, while having an independent space for staff, a place to conduct meetings with clients and contractors, and to simply have more room to do our work. The self sufficient building contains a kitchenette, washroom, printer / network cabinet and an open studio space. The small meeting sp... More

The towering wooden veil that surrounds the new south stands of TD Place at Lansdowne, creates an iconic image for the new stadium complex, setting it apart as a unique legacy landmark and connecting it to the surrounding natural environment of the Rideau Canal. Eric Sommer of Spring Valley translated the inspiration of architect Robert Claiborne into an intricate and precise lattice of timber and steel. The structure, which incorporates more than 12 kilometres (7.5 miles) of glue-laminated Alaskan Yellow Cedar contains more than 750,000 parts and is 154 metres wide by 25.5 metres high (505’ x 83’ 6”). 24 inverted L-shaped frames project vertically from the ground and bend more than 90° towards the field creating the structure’s com... More

There has been a trend toward empty nesters and retirees moving from the suburbs back to the urban amenities and proximities the suburbs do not offer. This house is on a north facing corner lot in a historic neighborhood a short walk from a grocery store, grade school, a community center and the cultural vibrancy of downtown Lawrence, Kansas. Vacant lots near downtown are expensive but this site was more affordable because it is surrounded by marginal properties. It also had once been a gas station and the old gas tanks were still in the ground and required removal. This triggered a string of EPA requirements to develop and sell the property. It fit studio 804’s mission to develop a brownfield site. The house is a modern, sustai... More

At its root, the Cloister House is a quiet refuge, a state of seclusion within the city, shared between a grandmother and her grandchildren. A finely crafted spine wall anchors the plan of the house, travelling from the front of the project to the rear. Whimsical kid-friendly elements are present, from an undulating boulder landscape to custom steel slides that run alongside the internal staircases. The hilltop site offers long views of the mountains and ocean which are balanced with shorter internally-focused views to the intimate pocket garden. Local artist, Fei Disbrow, designed a weathering steel wall sculpture + ladder surround that serve as backdrop for the pocket garden allowing filtered light to enter while providing privacy from ne... More

The design of this Gulf Islands’ private residence responds to the Client’s brief for the creation a ‘modern log cabin’ on a precious 3.1 acre piece of ocean-front property. The Client was torn between the idea of the rustic Canadian log cabin and the desire for a glass house. Through the use of a highly expressive structure, expanses of glass and a simple & minimal material palette the project took this challenge as it’s fundamental concept, striving to reconcile the rustic with the modern in its form, materiality and organization. There was a conscious decision to root the design of the house in the local tradition of First Nation’s Long House construction and the West Coast Style as pioneered by B.C. Binning, Robert Berwick, Ned Pratt, R... More

In association with Goring & Straja Architects Portola Valley’s old Town Center was located in a 1950’s school, built directly on top of the San Andreas Fault. The new Town Center occupies the same 11 acre site but relocates the buildings out of the fault zone in the northwest corner of the site. The Town Center is the heart of the civic, community and cultural life of the town, and is designed to expresses the character and values of Portola Valley. It also resolves the seismic, access, capacity and infrastructure issues of the old town center. Portola Valley was founded in 1964 to protect the western hills of this mid-peninsula community from development; so it followed that the primary development goals for the new center were to... More