SHLTR Issue 3 June 2025 : simplebooklet.com

PUBLISHERShelter.Partners, LLCEDITOR IN CHIEFZahid SardarCONSULTINGEDITORMichael GrayCONTRIBUTORSWRITERSZahid SardarReed WrightLaura MaukAhn-Minh LeKendra BoutellLisa BoquirenJennifer SterlingPHOTOGRAPHERSCesar RubioDavid LivingstonRichard BarnesMatthew MillmanMariko ReedChris StarkPaul DyerMarion BrennerBruce DamonteJoe FletcherAdam PottsJohn MerklCREATIVE DIRECTORTim PaschkeLAYOUT ANDSOCIAL MEDIAClaudia MiddendorfTMTMGOTHAM ULTRAGOTHAM BLACK ITALICGOTHAM ULTRA ITALICGOTHAM BLACKGOTHAM MEDIUM ITALICGOTHAM MEDIUMGOTHAM MEDIUM ITALICGOTHAM BOOKssu rc i ebbnowSHLTRSHLTRSHLTRSHLTRSHLTRSHLTRSHLTRSHLTR

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PUBLISHERShelter.Partners, LLCMEDIA, ADVERTISING, EVENTS DIRECTORCoralie Langston-Jonescoralie@shelter.partnersADVERTISING ART DIRECTIONPaschke Dwyertim@shelter.partnersPRODUCTION MANAGERClaudia Middendorf READER SERVICESMAILING ADDRESSInfo@shelter.partners268 Chenery Street, San Francisco, CA 94131 EDITORIAL SUBMISSIONSeditor@shelter.partnersVolume 1, Issue 3. SHLTR™ is published in San Francisco by Shelter.Partners, LLC. All rights reserved. Copyright®2025. Reproduction of SHLTR™ content is prohibited with out the expressed, written consent of SHLTR™: Unsolicited materials cannot be returned. SHLTR™ reserves the right to refuse to publish any advertisement deemed detrimen-tal to the best interests of the community or that is in questionable taste. SHLTR™ is delivered as a newsletter and digital publication to select recipients/addresses in the Bay Area.. SHLTR™ is produced as 12 newsletters and 6 digital issues annually by Shelter.Partners, LLC, from 268 Chenery Street, San Francisco, CA 94131FeldmanArchitectureA San Francisco design studio that is highly responsive to both people and place. We work to honor the spirit of each site and champion regenerative practices for a better future.GOTHAM ULTRAGOTHAM BLACK ITALICGOTHAM ULTRA ITALICGOTHAM BLACKGOTHAM MEDIUM ITALICGOTHAM MEDIUMGOTHAM MEDIUM ITALICGOTHAM BOOKssu rc i ebbnowSHLTRSHLTRSHLTRSHLTRSHLTRSHLTRSHLTRSHLTRTMTM

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12 JUNE, 2025 SHLTRFEATURES36TEXTURAL ALCHEMYStudio Ahead and Marmol Radziner collaborate in Silicon Valley. By Anh-Minh Le52CORE PRINCIPLESIn historic Seacli, something’s new.By Zahid Sardar64BLUE NOTEBerkeley’s David Yama brings bold colors to Corona Heights. By Kendra Boutell72A LANDSCAPE IN LAYERSJanell Denler Hobart paints a bucolic canvas in Ross. By Reed Wright78ART AS LANGUAGEThe unspoken world of artist Tucker Nichols By Zahid SardarCOVERAn abstract drawing of owers by Tucker Nichols from Mostly Everything, a new monograph showcasing his art.TUCKER NICHOLSCONTENTS JUNE ISSUE 2025EKATERINA IZMESTIEVA36

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14 JUNE, 2025 SHLTRDEPARTMENTS16EDITOR’S WELCOMERemaking spaces is a ﬁne art18ADVISORSLeaders who care about design20SPONSORSLasting thanks 22DESIGN SPOTZahid Sardar: New directions35OBJECTSLisa Boquiren: Design rounds 92OBSERVERZahid Sardar: Photographer Eugène Resh takes to the skies98ABOUT TOWNZahid Sardar: Old habits at Izzy’s 106ONE GOOD IDEAReed Wright: Architect Bob Swatt’s invisible touchCONTENTS JUNE ISSUE 2025COURTESY IDEO222322

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16 JUNE, 2025 SHLTREDITOR’S WELCOMETo celebrate summer, we’ve featured graphic artist Tucker Nichols’s joyful, stylized ﬂower arrangement from his new book, Mostly Everything: The Art of Tucker Nichols, on our cover. Composed of simpliﬁed abstract shapes, the graphic illustration nonetheless exudes life. In a sense, old buildings are also abstractions—of lives once lived within them—and their histories forever vivify such storied spaces. The homes featured in this issue have all been remodeled and reconﬁgured for new occupants: a young couple in a modernist Hillsborough, CA home; three generations living under one roof in Sea Cli; a couple revitalizing a former working-class house near Corona Heights Park; and a pair of avid gardeners who’ve transformed a former riding estate in Ross into a woodland of recreational walking trails accented with art. Each has chosen to preserve fragments of history that thrum with indefatigable ghosts and stories. Nichols’s book published by McSweeny’s also reveals the many ways he’s created art—mostly without words. He leaves the talking to his graphics, and we’ve excerpted a few eloquent examples. Photographer Eugène Resh uncovers more tales of the City via drone, while in a new Silicon Valley house by architect Bob Swatt, we discovered a hidden Frank Lloyd Wright quote—written in code. We hope you enjoy all the ciphers gathered here.AUBRIE PICKZAHID SARDAR,EDITOR-IN-CHIEF, SHLTR™EDITOR@SHELTER.PARTNERS@WEARESHELTER

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18 JUNE, 2025 SHLTRADVISORSJennifer Morlaheads Morla Designin San Francisco and isthe former Chief CreativeOcer at Design Within Reach, A Cooper HewittNational Design Awardand AIGA Medal-winner,she has taughtdesign at CCA.Takashi Yanai is a partner atEhrlich Yanai Rhee Chaney Architects based inLos Angeles andSan Francisco and haswon many design awards.He chairs theArchitecture andDesign AccessionsCommittee atSFMOMA.Jennifer Sterlingis a San Francisco graphic designer, now working on the Gulf Coast. Nvidia is among her clients. SFMOMA, Cooper Hewitt, and the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, all collect her work, and she is an Alliance Graphique Internationale inductee..Paul Vincent Wiseman founder of the SanFrancisco interiors ﬁrm, The Wiseman Group, combines ﬁne art with design innovation, and classicism with modernism. His global travels shape the ﬁrm’s eclecticism. The decorative arts, and custom designs elevate interiors for homes, yachts and airplanes. Roderick Wyllie a co-founder of theﬁrm SurfaceDesign,brings his horticulturalknowledge and zestfor material authenticityto complex urban projectsand parks. He is also aprofessor at HarvardGraduate Schoolof Design.David Darling a principal ofAidlin Darling Design,he works in a wide rangeof disciplines, including art, food, and architecture.He is an Interior DesignMagazine Hall of Fameinductee, a James BeardDesign Award- and aCooper-Hewitt NationalDesign Award-winner.Stacy Williams Executive Directorof the American Instituteof Architects San Francisco and the Center forArchitecture + Design,has led architectureand design initiatives,and advocates for amore vibrant builtenvironment.Ken Fulk is a designer onAD100 and Elle DecorA-lists for more thana decade. Inducted intoHospitality Design’sPlatinum Circle Hall of Fame, he is also a founder ofSaint Joseph’s ArtsSociety in the City. PHOTOS COURTESY OF INDIVIDUALS SHOWN

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DESIGN CHAMPIONS Susan & Je CampbellSusan Campbell sits on the boards of the New York CityBallet and the Vail Valley Foundation, as well as their Executive Committees and chairs the Vail Dance Festival. Je Campbell is theRetired Vice Chairmanand CFO at American Express, and sits onvarious corporate boards.Dr. Priya Kamani Dr. Priya Kamani has founded several tech startups, was on the board of YBCA in San Francisco for several years, and continues to support the visual arts.THANKS TO OUR SPONSORSCOLLABORATIVE COOPERATIONCenter for Architecture + DesignCoralie Langston-Jones and Krista CouparThanksLundberg DesignMark English Architects Marmol RadzinerStrata Landscape ArchitectureStudio VARATaylor LombardoArchitectsThe Oce of Charles de LisleThe Wiseman Group Walker WarnerWilliam Du ArchitectsAaron Gordon ConstructionAidlin Darling DesignAlicia Cheung DesignAT6 Architecture + Design BuildBlasen Landscape ArchitectureCrown ConstructionFeldman ArchitectureField ArchitectureKen FulkLuca StudioFOUNDING SPONSORS20 JUNE, 2025 SHLTR

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SHLTR JUNE, 2025 23DESIGN SPOT ZAHID SARDAR Shape ShiftersThe collaboration continued with 2023’s Pallana, a bar-shaped chandelier with six manually adjustable reﬂector rings. “Pallana’s rings are not motorized but have unlimited movement,” Over-thun noted. Around $4,000 via Moooi or DWR, the aluminum lamp marks IDEO’s ﬁrst co-branded commercial hit.IMAGES COURTESY OF IDEOIDEO’s New Moves Co-branding is on the horizonDesign consultancies like San Francis-co’s IDEO, founded in 1978 by Stan-ford’s David Kelley, once worked quietly behind the scenes, shaping early tech products like the mouse. But as former clients—Apple, for instance—built their own in-house design divisions, ﬁrms like IDEO had to reinvent themselves. The solution: become co-branders.At IDEO, the shift happened organ-ically. In 2015, Dutch designer Marcel Wanders—along with his whimsical Amsterdam-based brand Moooi—joined the studio for an unconventional design “internship,” eager to explore IDEO’s signature “human-centered” approach. Collaborating with design director Thomas Overthun, then-managing di-rector Clark Schey, and engineer Niko Vladimirov, Wanders co-created Piro: a tubular, pirouetting scent dispenser with a chrome torso, swiveling top, and fragrant rings of light. “It did not need to look like a cute character to be a cute character,” Overthun said.Unveiled at Milan’s 2022 furniture fair, the joyful little robot—its movements inspired by dancer Catie Cuan—capti-vated crowds. “Technology does not just solve problems. It can create joy,” said Schey. With AI, Piro could some-day become a robotic pet.Harnessing the magic of technology and craftAbove: Prototypes of Piro, the robotic dancing scent dispenser, designed by IDEO with Moooi.Opposite: Pallana, IDEO and Moooi’s co-branded chandelier with swiveling ring lights.

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24 JUNE, 2025 SHLTRPattern Language Designer Patricia Buse’s experimental works take their place in the sun.Patricia Buse’s colorful, translucent acrylic resin constructions—designed to be placed outdoors—might never have seen the light of day, so to speak, if not for what she calls “a ﬂuke.” Gallery 107 at Minnesota Street Project recently had an unexpected opening in its roster, giv-ing Buse the chance to ﬁnally mount her ﬁrst public show, Architecture of Light and Color, alongside complementary abstract paintings by her partner and fellow artist, Stephen Singer.Buse, of German descent, is also an molecular scientist. Unsurprisingly, the low, mostly rectilinear tables and bench-es her company Pale Blaze has been de-veloping over the past eight years echo the visual language of microscope slides.Deliberately low—like Japanese furni-ture—the UV-resistant pieces are intend-ed for outdoor placement. Sunlight plays across their surfaces, casting overlapping colored shadows resembling a Josef Albers painting.Sculptors James Turrell and Donald Judd are strong inﬂuences on Buse, who uses her creations as instruments to re-fract light and multiply perceived planes.“How does nature’s ever-changing vi-sual phenomena shape our daily percep-tions?” Buse wonders. In the evolutionary game of pattern recognition, “What tricks does the eye play on us?”From $250-$10,000. Paleblaze.com, gallery107.arts Above: A Pale Blaze colored acrylic resin ‘table’ by Sonoma artist Patricia Buse, exhibited recently at Galley 107 at Minnesota Street Project in San Francisco.ZAHID SARDARDESIGN SPOT

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26 JUNE, 2025 SHLTRCultural Chimeras Creative mashups from the Subcontinent A recent show called Closer Than They Appear, curated by architect Anand Sheth with gallery re.riddle inside San Francisco’s Minnesota Street Project, took on the theme of self-reﬂection. Sheth, who’s American with Indian roots, included a couple of designers from India among more than a dozen artists who created furnishings featured in the exhibition.Darshini Shah, a San Francisco-based product designer and founder of the studio Kaarhaus, created a textile diptych—two hand-embroidered hangings dotted with tiny mirrors, like the ones you see on traditional garments from her native Gujarat. One panel, with its neat, straight lines, reﬂects the structured society she grew up in; the other, full of loose, wavy lines, gestures toward her evolving American self. Still, both panels of the same size use identical materials and techniques, suggesting that deep cultural roots are anchoring, no matter where you land.IMAGES COURTESY ANAND SHETHLeft: Soft Geometry’s highly polished stainless steel thali mirror created by Utharaa Zacharias and Palaash Chaudhary at their Los Angeles studio, is at SFMOMA. Below/ opposite: Details of the textile diptych designed by Kaarhaus founder Darshini Shah in San Francisco. Over in Los Angeles, Utharaa Zacharias and Palaash Chaudhary—the creative minds behind Soft Geometry—took the humble thali, the all-purpose Indian dining tray, and gave it a high-shine twist. They polished it to a mirror ﬁnish and called the limited-edition series Mirrors for Aliens. One of the trays is in SFMOMA’s collection. The idea came to them while they were waiting on visa approvals, wrestling with the label “non-resident aliens.” The mirror tray became their way of looking at themselves dierently—alien, maybe, but still tied to a familiar, personal past.anandsheth.com kaarhaus.com soft-geometry.com reriddle.com DESIGN SPOT

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28 JUNE, 2025 SHLTRHiding in Plain Sight Brushed-on glitzAn unexpected surprise awaited visitors to the 2025 San Francisco Decorator Showcase, tucked discreetly between a sumptuous kitchen and an Insta-gram-worthy dining room. In a narrow pass-through pantry, decorative ﬁnisher Willem Racké created a jewel-box mo-ment and a tactile work of art.Racké combined hand-troweled black Venetian plaster with stenciled and painted motifs in a contemporary pattern, achieving a silken ﬁnish that is visually delicate, like embroidery, yet feels strikingly solid.“We didn’t change the old cabine-try—we were just trying to make the room stand out in a short time,” Racké explains. And how short? Just four days.The walls began with a deep black base coat. They painted the transferred patterns freehand and with stencils to expedite the process. Existing brass shelving was bued to a soft luster, and the cabinetry was lacquered to match.Look closely, and there’s more than just black and white at play. Subtle shades of umber and blue within the ﬂoral motifs lend a surprising three-di-mensionality to the surface.“I wanted the design to pop o the walls,” says Racké—and it does, oer-ing visitors a moment of beauty in a once-overlooked space. willemrackestudio.comWillem Racké Studio designed and nished a small pantry between a kitchen and dining room at the 2025 San Francisco Decorator Showcase.DESIGN SPOT COURTESY WILLEM RACKE STUDIO

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SHLTR JUNE, 2025 35The versatile Oco side table is a 2018 ‘classic’ by Jorge Arturo Ibarra who studied in San Francisco. A nod to the geometry of Mexican Brutalist architecture it is made by hand in Mexico from walnut and iroko, a tropical hardwood as tough as teak. Usable indoors and occasionally outdoors. Depending on ﬁnishes, about $3,800 at luteca.com Minimal in form, the Mernøe No. 2 table lamp by Morten Mernøe is carefully engineered with a wood shade and base linked by a slender brass sleeve for the cord. At brightonpresidio.com UFO, a spaceship-like upholstered hardwood ottoman by Rick Lee for Thayer Coggin is inspired by forms in mid-century comic books and sci-ﬁ classics. At khromestudios com LISA BOQUIREN OBJECTSThe Nido lounge chair by Los Angeles-based Estudio Persona can be ordered through Prevalent Projects in Mill Valley. Its base is made from a selection of solid hardwoods, and is topped with a laminated wood seat, Depending on materials and ﬁnishes, around $7,200 at prevalentprojects.com Design Drive: Curving Around the Bend ALL IMAGES COURTESY OF DESIGNERSAllegro, a sinuous coee table, is one ribbon of hand-bent natural rattan laminated over a power-coated met-al frame. $4,678 at select showrooms or retailers listed at Palecek.com

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SHLTR JUNE, 2025 37Studio AHEAD and architects Marmol Radziner revised a modernist mansion deep in Silicon Valley, with handcraed features. BY ANH MINH-LE PHOTOS BY EKATERINA ISMESTIEVATextural AlchemyMarmol Radziner kept the home’s chimney intact, refreshing it with paint, while introducing stained West-ern red cedar siding and Madre Perola quartzite steps.

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When a young San Francisco couple was looking to refresh their Nob Hill residence six years ago, a dinner party encounter led to them becoming Studio AHEAD’s ﬁrst client. Not long after the completion of the project, with their family growing, the husband and wife decamped to the leafy suburb of Hills-borough and, in her words, “were more than ready to continue the fun.” Thus, the art and design collective’s found-ers, Elena Dendiberia and Homan Rajai, were enlisted once again.This time around — through a master-ful mix of vintage, custom and com-missioned objects — Studio AHEAD conjured 6,000 square feet of singular-ity, teeming with personal signiﬁcance. The husband’s experience on the water is expressed in the breakfast nook’s handmade table by Elin Aschberg and Esmeralda Vidfar of Vava Objects, composed of ﬁberglass sourced from an Italian fabricator that uses the mate-rial for yachts. In the study, a Studio AHEAD-designed maple desk, evoking Donald Judd’s minimalism, coexists with a 1950s MAA chair by George Nelson for Herman Miller. According to Rajai, the client’s bud-get was essentially split between the Top (living room): A painting by West Marin-based artist Madeleine Fitzpatrick captivates.Bottom (living room replace): Studio AHEAD suggested extending the basalt stone replace surround to the window to “thrust the eye toward the view,” says designer Homan Rajai; Similar stone backs a nearby bookcase; a sculpture atop the mantel is by JB Blunk.Opposite: Along with a Ceppo di Gre lime-stone sink, the powder room is appointed with a mirror and lighting designed by Studio AHEAD.

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Custom designs paired with art and commissioned works complement new nishes throughout.purchase of the house and the ensuing renovations. “We wanted a family home that felt both welcoming and elevated — a cozy, earthy, California version of mid-century modern,” the wife recalls. Studio AHEAD connected the client to Marmol Radziner, which has “a unique approach of architecture, landscape and construction,” says Jason Davis, its San Francisco studio director. “Because we ended up doing all of those services, our interactions with Homan and Elena were very collaborative.” Davis and his team handled the interi-or and exterior architecture — including ﬁnishes such as tiles, stones and plumb-ing ﬁxtures — while Studio AHEAD was responsible for the wallcoverings, drap-ery and loose furnishings, often layering in contrasting elements. “We created a lot of these rounded moments that soft-en the rectilinear quality of the house,” Top: A custom Thomas Fetherston dining table is paired with Pierre Chapo chairs.Bottom: Marmol Radziner added the kitchen skylight. Artful elements include a wood sculp-ture by Ido Yoshimoto, ceramic bowls by Rina Menardi and Studio AHEAD’s Sheep Stool.Opposite:The dining room is illuminated by a Michael Anastassiades chandelier from Ralph Pucci, a custom ceramic wall sculpture by Jeannine Marchand is prominently positioned.

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SHLTR JUNE, 2025 45Rajai says, pointing to the custom rugs. Expanses of drapery have a cocooning eect, especially in rooms with the fab-ric covering the walls as well. For Marmol Radziner, there were three main focuses: a central area with the kitchen, which ﬂows into the family and dining rooms; the primary suite, where the bedroom, bathroom and closets were redeveloped; and a mudroom and hallway, part of the newly added square footage. Along with splendid views — encompassing the San Francisco Bay, pool with a hillside backdrop and cano-py of oak trees — the property is char-acterized by its mid-century lineage. Marmol Radziner’s ﬂuency with that era is well-documented; take the restoration of Richard Neutra’s Kaufmann House in Palm Springs. When Davis joined the ﬁrm in 2003, his ﬁrst project was the Garcia House in Los Angeles, designed by John Lautner. The Hillsborough dwelling retained its rooﬂines, and the placement of the openings largely stayed the same (though windows and doors were replaced). “The overall envelope is still very similar, just with new ﬁnishes,” Davis observes. “You’re sensitive and harkening back to the original design but doing so with modern materials and modern construction methods.” Case The home’s rectilinear architecture is softened by round carpets and expanses of drapery fabricated by Dianne Kirchner using de Le Cuona’s Atelier sheer linen fabrics. Opposite: The entry features several Studio AHEAD-designed items: a rug hand-cut and surged on-site by California Carpet; the Sheep Stool; a side chair, fabricated by Rossi Antiques; and a wall sconce, by Phoenix Day.

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SHLTR JUNE, 2025 47in point: The vertically oriented shiplap exterior siding gave way to Western red cedar with comparable grooved detail-ing. The wood was stained a creamy hue to integrate with the freshly painted existing brick chimney.Meanwhile, on the back side of the abode, ipe decks now “extend the indoor living spaces outward, strength-ening the physical and visual relation-ship between the house and the gar-den,” explains Aista Sobouti, a senior project manager in Marmol Radziner’s landscape arm. To address the client’s desires for more functional and fam-ily-friendly grounds, the pool deck includes an outdoor living area — ideal for relaxing or entertaining— and, near the lawn, a ﬂagstone patio serves as an informal seating venue, “perfect for watching the children while they play,” Sobouti says. Marmol Radziner and Studio AHEAD were united in their restrained material palette. White oak permeates the interi-or, comprising the ﬂoors and cabinetry. Rajai and Dendiberia designed light Since its 2019 launch, Studio AHEAD has championed artists and artisans — in particular, those with Bay Area ties.Standouts in the primary suite include the bed (opposite) with attached desk (above) — a custom Studio AHEAD piece, built by C. Mariani Antiques, Restoration & Custom. Among the splendid details of the desk are top drawers wrapped in Edelman leather. The painting on the wall is by the artist Gordon Onslow Ford.

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ﬁxtures and furniture that took advan-tage of stone remnants. Steps from the front door, a chair fabricated by Rossi Antiques combines Ceppo di Gre lime-stone left over from the powder room with walnut. Inside and out, wall sconc-es made by Phoenix Day incorporate Madre Perola quartzite, which Marmol Radziner selected for the exterior stairs and entry landing. In the entryway, Studio AHEAD has has showcased artists and artisans with Bay Area ties. A giclée print by Fujio Emura, who studied at Academy of Art University, is on one wall alongside a ce-ramic sculpture and wood pedestal by San Francisco-based multidisciplinary artist Jesse Schlesinger. Studio visits, with clients in tow, are not uncommon; for this project, a ﬁeld trip was taken to C. Mariani Antiques, Restoration & Custom, which built the primary suite’s oak bed-slash-desk, upholstered by Jim Thompson. Rajai describes the design duo’s process as “exploratory” — a tack that clearly resonates with their repeat client. “It has been such a treat to see art through Homan’s and Elena’s eyes,” she says. “We have been introduced to so many inspiring artists and perspec-tives throughout our time working with Studio AHEAD.” In the ofce, a 1950s MAA chair by George Nelson for Herman Miller is mated with a desk and rug conceived by Studio AHEAD; the latter evokes yacht designer Jon Bannen-berg and nods to the client’s time on the water. Opposite: Over a Grain Design rug, in a child’s bedroom, a Blu Dot bed is anked by cork tables designed by Studio AHEAD and manufactured by OTQ.50 JUNE, 2025 SHLTR

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SHLTR JUNE, 2025 55THIS AND PREVIOUS PAGE BY ADAM POTTSAbove and left: The living room to the left of the restored Neoclassical wood front door, is a study in whites and browns dominated by a Christophe Delcourt sofa and armchair, a swivel chair by Dmitry & Co and a coffee table by Natasha Baradaran, atop a rug by Henzel.Opposite: on the other side, a dining table by Troscan is paired with O chairs by Eponimo, a sideboard by Philipp Selva and a pendant by Roll & Hill. Nearly a decade ago, the new owners of a 1924 Sea Cli residence—originally de-signed by architect Earle Bertz—set out to transform the 4,900-square-foot Spanish Revival home into a pied-à-terre for their visits from China, where they live full-time. Drawn by proximity to their daughter and grandchildren in San Francisco, the couple enlisted the local architecture and design ﬁrm Síol Studios, with whom they’d previously collaborated on sever-al Bay Area projects, to help reimagine the space.At ﬁrst, cursory interior updates seemed sucient. But after a few years,

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The kitchen’s ribbed cabinetry with cus-tom wood handles designed by Síol is jux-taposed with grey Calacatta counters and backsplashes. Pendant lights are by Allied Maker and stools are by Studio Bola. Opposite: Facing the kitchen is a large dining area for the family, dominated bya Mortise dining table and benches by Sawkille, with Christophe Delcourt chairs at the ends, all under a Rich Brilliant Willing pendant light. The replace is troweled with Tadelakt plaster.SHLTR JUNE, 2025 57the homeowners agreed a deeper ar-chitectural intervention was needed to undo unsympathetic alterations made during the 1980s.One particularly jarring addition was a bay window that broke the symme-try of the home’s original neoclassical façade, disrupting a graceful rhythm of arched openings. “But it wasn’t just about restoring the house to its original state,” says Síol founder Kevin Hackett. “The staircases between ﬂoors were disjointed. That was the core problem.”While Hackett oered input during

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the initial planning, design lead respon-sibilities fell to partner architect Robo Gerson in San Francisco—who knew the clients well—and co-founder and interior designer Jessica Weigley from Síol’s New York oce.“We didn’t want to touch the exterior more than necessary—Sea Cli is under a historic preservation overlay, and the building code is already very restrictive,” Gerson explains. “But we were able to convince the planning department to let us restore the original arched windows.”Inside, where there was more ﬂexibility, Gerson tackled the disconnected stair system. A clumsy split-level landing on the top ﬂoor consumed valuable space. Removing it allowed for a continuous staircase rising from the basement to the third ﬂoor, where it meets an existing circular stair to the roof. Crafting a hand-rail ﬂush with the wall—a subtle detail that preserves the narrow stairway’s width—became a “labor of love.”“We created a single circulation zone,” Gerson says. “Now there’s a better ﬂow—both vertically and horizontally.”The overhaul wasn’t simple. Excavating a shaft to the basement required leveling a depressed slab, and the new central core—built with wood framing and rein-forced with steel—supports soaring, dou-ble-height volumes, clerestory windows, and a skylight that even channels daylight into a second-ﬂoor powder room.Top: The existing third oor spiral staircase has new wood treads and a custom railing inspired by handrails created for the new stairwell. Bottom: a detail of the custom handrails, and a glimpse of Eamon Ore-Giron’s artwork. Opposite: The principal water closet’s wood and steel shelf shares the same prole as the handrails.

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Walls were removed to open up long sightlines across the second ﬂoor. On the top ﬂoor, demolition revealed two slender arched windows—previously buried—that were restored to bring natural light and postcard-perfect ocean views into the principal water closet.Inspired by those rediscovered arches and other windows, Weigley echoed simi-lar curved forms in both curated and cus-tom furnishings throughout the home. The interplay of expansive views and a calm, modern sensibility sparked what she de-scribes as “ideas of prospect and refuge.” The interiors were pared back to a palette of earthy sandstone, soft orange, and oce-anic blue—a nod to the home’s location. With fewer doors and more ﬂuid spaces, “we played with thresholds and imaginary portals for them to pass through,” Wieg-ley says. In the principal bedroom, square leather tiles cover ﬂoors, walls and ceiling, forming a cozy, boxed cocoon that cradles the view beyond.When the renovation was complete, Weigley dressed the home down to the ﬂowers in the vases and the sheets on the beds—just in time for the family’s ﬁrst Christmas in the home, right before the pandemic.Then, as Gerson notes, “the pandemic changed the calculus.” What had been a vacation home became a true multigen-erational residence. The family hunkered down together, and the ﬂexible layout proved resilient—even with preschoolers in The principal bedroom is both a refuge and a prospect. Spinneybeck leather tiles on the oor, walls and ceiling form a cocoon for the bed. A sofa by Todd Merrill Studio, a bergere by De la Es-pada, around a coffee table by Mauro Mori atop a round rug by Erden, form an island in the ‘view’.Eclipse pendant lights are by Lee Broom.SHLTR JUNE, 2025 61

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Counter clockwise from above: In a windowless bathroom in the basement, an oval BDDW mirror adds depth; The new second oor powderoom’s circular standing sink saves space and its skylight and Melt pendants by Tom Dixon illuminate the back wall; The guest bathroom’s freestanding vanity and mirror oat within a bay window.Opposite: The principal bath has limestone tiles. the mix. “It worked so well, they stayed in that conﬁguration long after it was neces-sary,” he adds.The guest room beside the principal suite became the children’s bedroom, allowing grandparents to care for them while their parents used the lower level—shared with a garage and a lounge with backyard access, replacing a former theater—as their own retreat for work and rest.“It became a refuge for three genera-tions,” Gerson says.

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64 JUNE, 2025 SHLTR BY KENDRA BOUTELL David Yama’s ribbons of color jazz up a modest Corona Heights hideout.PHOTOS BY BRUCE DAMONTEThe home’s garage door, painted an opulent Mayan Gold from Benjamin Moore, glows against the navy blue (Abyss) exterior. Right: In the foyer, a sky-lit, high-gloss, sky-blue ribbon staircase gets reected in a sleek Eskimo Design mirror radiator.

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A native New York City lawyer and his partner, an athletic trainer from Massa-chusetts, wanted to exchange their San Francisco condo for a house, so they considered bucolic Marin. Instead, they found a home bordering San Francisco’s Corona Heights Park, with views of its rocky hilltop, grasslands, and wildﬂow-ers. A metropolitan oasis now, the park was once Gray Brothers Quarry and Brick Factory. Their two-story residence, built in 1925, was part of the original working-class neighborhood that now perfectly combines nature with city life for the couple.However, they wanted to renovate the 2,700 sq ft space, opening up the ﬂoor plan, illuminating it with natural light, and framing the park views. Their exposure to design and art in New York and Boston inﬂuenced their aesthetic, resulting in a collection of furnishings that featured mid-century, modern, and artisanal pieces. They needed an archi-tect who would transform the house while understanding its history. Despite the challenge of the pandemic, they found Berkeley-based David Yama of Yama Architecture.Trained at Columbia University, the ar-chitect has had a diverse career, includ-ing work in New York and Tokyo. Poetic modernism etches his designs, and for the Corona house, Yama reimagined the ﬂow of the home from the entrance Top: Originally, there were no clear sightlines from the kitchen to the back garden; now, with the open oor plan, they can even see the park. Bottom: Clonduff Construction also installed the U-shaped Henrybuilt kitchen. The cabinetry conceals a refrigerator on the right of the entry opening, while the other side is for storage.Opposite: At the kitchen counter, Chris Lil-jenberg Halstrøm counter stools t in. Details include darkened brass hardware.

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68 JUNE, 2025 SHLTRby replacing a dark and awkward foyer and staircase with a space illuminated by daylight. The focal point is a white origami-like staircase ‘wrapped’ with a high-gloss sky-blue ribbon. “I’ve been obsessed with folded shapes for a while. I’ve also been obsessed with the idea of a stair ‘ribbon.’ Ribbons are dynamic, festive, colorful, and entirely decorative,” says Yama. Visitors ascend white oak treads, experiencing light from the skylight and a translucent interior window glowing with LED strips. On the second ﬂoor, Yama ﬂipped the original layout, moving the public rooms to the rear and making the front rooms private. The open-plan living room, dining room, and kitchen allow the clients to enjoy the park’s landscape. Removal of a tiny attic between the ﬂat ceiling and the sloped roof gained height and a faceted ceiling. “We saw the potential of the existing ‘angled’ roof framing as a way to design movement into the new space,” explains the architect.The open living and casual dining room painted a bright reﬂective white, displays the clients’ furnishings. In the bay window, where Yama replaced double-hung windows with tall, wood-In the living room, De La Espada’s contempo-rary take on a Chinese opium bed bisects the space. Elizabeth Dow’s mid-century French-in-spired credenza on the opposing wall provides functional beauty. A Danish mid-century-styled sofa and Wilkes Modular Armchair add seating around a Nero Marquina marble and steel coffee table.

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framed ones, the homeowners dine at a round “X” leg table. Or they choose to sit at the kitchen bar that dovetails with the living room. Yama selected Henrybuilt for the kitchen millwork. The pantry showcas-es walnut cabinetry with a blue-black laminate face surmounted by a Mango Heath Tile backsplash. Whimsical green ﬂower pot pendants dance in the air. On the opposite side, Heath’s soft blue Hydrangea tiles complement the warm walnut wood. While the kitchen ﬂoods with light from a skylight and lightwell, the clients opted for a dark, formal din-ing and game room, painting it a deep, moody amethyst. Their vintage Børge Mogensen dining chairs surround an elegant wood tripod table, which they highlighted with Rosie Li’s geometric ﬂush-mount ceiling ﬁxture. On the ground level, the hallway’s atmospheric mural leads to the prima-ry suite. “For the clients’ holiday gift, I gave them a wallpaper consultation with designer Alison Damonte instead of a bottle of bubbles,” Yama says. They selected a Calico ombré that transitions from dark green at the bottom to blue at the top. As if to echo that, he painted the tranquil bedroom a leafy green and its double doors open to a back garden and open skies beyond. Top: In the guest bedroom, a translucent glass window that opens into the sky-lit stairwell, glows against blue-violet walls. Bottom: The guest bathroom showcases Island Blue Heath tiles set in a vertical running bond pattern that contrasts pleasingly with a mini-malist wall-hung wood vanity by Henrybuilt. Opposite: A dining table from De La Espada in the dark violet game room is good for mahjong. A faceted ceiling light by Rosie Li is overhead.

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SHLTR JUNE, 2025 75Bay Area landscape designer Janell Denler Hobart is known for her under-stated presence and reﬁned work, often collaborating with architect Ken Lindsteadt on stately estate gardens that balance classical elegance with modern sensibility. That harmony suits her.But in the hilly, unbounded garden of a Ross property—originally part of a Bechtel family summer estate—Hobart found her-self working without a playbook.The story began nearly thirty years ago when the owners, a pair of lawyers with green thumbs, bought the former riding Above: The lanai-style pool house with views of Mt. Tam has doors that pocket or fold away. Opposite: The ‘bridge’ doubles as a diving perch.grounds. By the time Hobart was invited a decade ago for her expertise with plants, the couple had raised their family there and spent years taming the land. They had transformed the 3-acre property, with its sweeping views of Mt. Tam, into a lived-in landscape: trails lined with stone, a green-house for propagating native trees, a veg-etable garden, bee boxes, giant swings, a treehouse, and a deep, amoeba-shaped pool

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ﬂanked by an outdoor kitchen where annual gatherings took place.“We wanted it to be mostly native,” the owner says. “I didn’t want just a ﬂower gar-den everywhere.”Set amid ancient oaks, madrone, and buckeye trees—and anchored by a Japa-nese-style ranch house—the landscape was already deeply bucolic. So what was left for Hobart to do?“My role was to ﬁll out the canvas,” she says. “I waved my arms a lot and suggested combinations of plants to paint the land-scape with.” Some ﬂourished. Others didn’t. But over time, more of her choices took root, and a creative partnership blossomed.Oakleaf hydrangeas thrived. Swirling mondo grass now meets clipped lawn and structured hedges. There are “rivers of bulbs” that rise seasonally in a muted choreography of arbutus, salvias, iris, and alliums. Hobart designed a soft bed of brunnera and other low-growing plants to cradle a solid stone fountain by sculptor Edwin Hamilton, who the owners ﬁrst met when he built their rock walls and pizza oven. They’ve since commis-sioned larger works, including a piece titled Twist. Their love of stone is echoed through-out the garden, both in material and in form.When a sleek, lanai-style pool house was completed—just in time to serve as the couple’s home during pandemic-induced delays in building their new house—Hobart replanted the area with drifts of Sedum ‘Autumn Joy’. Later, as the new house rose, she installed bands of gray and greenish bluestone paving that tie the structure to its natural surroundings.“We worked our way out the door,” Hobart says, smiling—fully aware that she’ll return. Top: Part of the mile-long paved trail that weaves through the 3-acre property in Ross.Bottom: A trailside sculpture by artist Jack Zajac.Opposite: Edwin Hamilton’s gray basalt Twist.

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ART BY TUCKER NICHOLSFor Tucker Nichols, 55, who was diag-nosed with Crohn’s disease at an early age, art became a vital way to express what words often fail to capture — even chaos. Raised in Boston and now based in Marin County, Nichols realized early on that working in bursts, between bouts of illness, was the only viable path forward. Being an artist, he decided, was one possibility.While earning a master’s degree in the history of Chinese painting, Nichols began taking short walks, sometimes on the beach, to regroup — observing nature, collecting objects, and quietly recharging. That habit never stopped. A rock shard shaped like California? Keep. A battered piece of driftwood that re-sembles a duck? Also keep.On days he stays indoors, Nichols draws and paints what he’s thinking or feeling, turning thoughts into visu-al codes. This work — often cryptic, occasionally comedic — has appeared in The New Yorker and the New York Times Op-Ed pages. One sketch for an article on tax evasion simply reads: “$$$HH.”Nichols’ practice blends sardonic humor with a tender sense of wonder. His output — drawings, wordless cartoons, collag-es of found objects, diagrams, ﬂowers, people, places, and things — has long appeared piecemeal: in books, exhibitions, T-shirts, tote bags, and sprawling instal-lations. Now, it’s all collected for the ﬁrst time in a bold, genre-defying volume.Titled Mostly Everything: The Art of Tucker Nichols, and designed by Sunra Thompson, the book is published by McSweeney’s in San Francisco. It’s a ne-78 JUNE, 2025 SHLTRArt as Language: The Unspoken World of Tucker NicholsThe artist, whose work often appears in the New Yorker and the New York Times, quietly lets images of his objects, drawings and sculpture do the explosive and beautiful talking.BY ZAHID SARDAR

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SHLTR JUNE, 2025 91on-red, double-spined, hard-to-catego-rize monograph. Or as Nichols describes it, “an exciting object.” There are no explanatory essays — only his drawings and diagrams, eloquent and strange, layered with meaning.We spoke with Nichols about the book’s many chapters — Humans, Landscapes, Diagrams (the wordiest), Flora, Sculp-tures, Monuments, Science & Technology, and Creatures — but Flora, admittedly, always seems to rise to the top.His connection to ﬂowers runs deep. Nichols’ mother was a competitive ﬂorist, and he was often her assistant — especial-ly at the Philadelphia Flower Show. “Grow-ing up, my brother and I couldn’t use the kitchen sink because her cut ﬂowers were stored in there,” he recalls. She was always rearranging their home with odd ﬂea market ﬁnds and ﬂoral arrangements. Through her, he absorbed a natural ﬂuen-cy in spacing, absurdity, and composition.Flowers, for Nichols, are more than subjects. They’re a medium for emotion. “You can say almost anything with a ﬂower,” he says. “The boundary be-tween abstraction and representation is solved with ﬂowers. The same ﬂower can mean dierent things. We use ﬂow-ers because we don’t know how to put something in words.”That insight reﬂects the emotional core of his work. While many of his drawings may appear abstract, they are almost always rooted in real-world refer-ences — like a crosshatched watercolor of a forest after a ﬁre.“If I paint something abstract with no reference to the real world, it has no rea-son to be,” Nichols says. “For me, ﬂow-ers have just enough content. They can be abstract, but they’re also these little packets of emotion being captured. ” tuckernichols.com, mcsweeneys.netALL IMAGES COURTESY OF MCSWEENEY’S

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92 JUNE, 2025 SHLTRLooking Closely, On the Fly OBSERVER BY ZAHID SARDARWith ﬁnancial institutions and other temples of commerce ﬂagging since the pandemic, business consultant and hobby photographer Eugène Resh, 50, quit San Francisco in 2023 to roam the world. The city had been his home for decades — even though he was born in Minsk, Belarus, and his dad is Russian.He didn’t feel pushed out. “I don’t want to work full time anyway,” he says. These days, when he’s back in the Bay Area from Phuket, Thailand (where he recently put down new roots), this self-proclaimed nomad loves pointing his lens — now often attached to drones — at the familiar spots he once knew.“I like to use a Sony Alpha 9 camera, and I was totally against drone pho-tography at ﬁrst,” he admits. “When it’s windy and gusty, you can’t always bring the drone back. I’ve lost three already.”Still, the pull to see the city from above and chase those abstract pat-terns? Too strong to ignore.“We’ve got hills and high-rises. It was always my dream to look down on the Pyramid,” he says. And he made it happen. On a recent visit, he didn’t just capture that — he also spotted aberrant grids in the hills, geometric shipyards at Hunters Point, sea trac on the Bay, and wide, ﬂat expanses out in the avenues where a Russian Orthodox cathedral rises up, seemingly as high as the Salesforce Tower in downtown San Francisco. From high above the Apple Campus in Silicon Valley, he snapped cars on the roadway nearby — a detail that shows just how massive its circular building really is.“I treat photography like a job now,” Resh says. “Yeah, I can shoot with an iP-hone — but a camera on the street and a drone in the air? Essential.” Globetrotter Eugène Resh views the City and the Bay Area from above. Opposite: The gilded 1965 Holy Virgin Russian Orthodox cathedral designed by Oleg Ivanitsky stands tall in San Francisco’s Richmond. COURTESY EUGENE RESH

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96 JUNE, 2025 SHLTRPrevious spread: A drone’s-eye view of downtown San Francisco centers on the 61-story Salesforce Tower, designed by César Pelli and completed in 2018. Topping the city’s tallest building is a lumi-nous light sculpture by artist Jim Campbell, cast-ing a dynamic glow after dark over the skyline.This spread: High above Apple Park—also known as Apple Campus 2—in Silicon Valley, Eugène Resh captured an aerial view that includes tiny cars on a nearby roadway, emphasizing the colos-sal scale of the circular, four-story headquarters designed by Norman Foster. The massive structure encloses dozens of acres of landscaped greenery and an articial pond.”

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A GachotMoment No one wanted to ditch the past. “We were just looking to update the restau-rant and not let a cool legacy die,” says Samantha DuVall Bechtel, a history bu and daughter of founder Sam Duvall. Shuttered for nearly a year and a half after his passing, Izzy’s Steaks and Chops—a Marina staple since 1987—reopened earlier this year, seemingly unaltered. But, even though some old features remain, the dark oak wood ﬂoors and front booths, burgundy leath-er seats, ribbed glass partitions, are all new, deliberately chosen to evoke the Barbary Coast era and the kind of inte-rior you might stumble upon in a North Beach eatery serving time-honored fare.To match, chef Daniel Lucero has conjured up a nostalgic yet stylish menu tuned for contemporary palates.The revamped two-story interior—de-signed by New York ﬁrm Gachot—fea-tures a vintage bar and private mezza-nine. A large mural, painted by Matthew Benedict in a 1950s advertising style, depicts the restaurant’s namesake, Izzy Gomez, a salty Portuguese bootlegger from the Prohibition era. With the addi-tion of Fireclay tiles, IRG stone and oth-er artful San Francisco design elements throughout, the capacious restaurant looks frozen in time—yet cozily modern. izzysanfrancisco.com Restaurant Izzy’s moody vibe is a bid for longevity. PHOTOS BY WILLIAM JESS LAIRDZAHID SARDAR ABOUT TOWN

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106 JUNE, 2025 SHLTRONE GOOD IDEA BY REED WRIGHTFinishing TouchWhen Bob Swatt, founder of Swatt + Partners Architecture, needed a divider for a home in Healdsburg called “Whispering Stones,” to screen o living spaces from the entryway, he initially imagined a plain freestanding wall that could also serve as a backdrop for art.While considering that option, he and interior designer Connie Wong, who was also on his team, drew inspiration from the home’s structural concrete walls, which were indent-ed with evenly-spaced round tie holes.Could the divider wall include such holes, ﬁlled with glass, to let light through? That idea gradually evolved into a wall that displays a message — written in what the designers call “reverse braille,” because the braille “letters,” recessed into the ﬂoating 16-by-11-foot steel divider, are indented rather than raised.The client chose a Frank Lloyd Wright quote: “The longer I live, the more beautiful life becomes.” In this case, the longer it took to de-sign the divider, the more poetic it became. Above and right: Facing the home’s entryway, the hollow kitchen divider wall —composed of two sheets of pow-der-coated steel and cylindrical tubing embedded with clear glass — was fabricated by Chris French Metal.TIM GRIFFITH