SHLTR issue 1 March 2025 : simplebooklet.com

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 1. 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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16 PREMIERE ISSUE, 2025 SHLTREDITOR’S WELCOMEWelcome. A few days ago, I visited the Berkeley Art Complex and, by chance, stumbled upon Kerbi Urbanowski, bent over strips of metal and glass, repairing a vintage leaded-glass window. She’s a contemporary artist who studied painting at the historic San Francisco Art Institute, which recently closed. She showed me glass fragments from Grace Cathedral’s broken windows, soon to be incorporated into a large modern piece for OpenAI’s headquarters. Urbanowski embodies the Bay Area’s artists, custodians of creativity and craft dating back to architects like Willis Polk and Bernard Maybeck. Their 19th-century buildings, though neoclassical, heralded modernity—like the Polk-designed building now housing the Center for Architecture + Design, one of the ﬁrst in the world to feature a curtain wall glass exterior. The creative energy of past movements—the Beatniks, Hippies, and architects like Joseph Esherick, William Turnbull, Donlyn Lyndon, and Lawrence Halprin—shaped design experiments that still inﬂuence the Bay Area today. Sea Ranch, in particular, has inspired generations of architects and designers, contributing to one of the largest concentrations of skilled creators anywhere. This handmade quality is what makes Bay Area design unique, a theme we’ll explore often. Whether discussing products from local ateliers like Fuseproject, Pablo, or Fyrn, we highlight the Bay Area’s spirit. Contrary to the belief that artists have left, they remain, resilient and in unexpected corners. Meet future stars in our pages. Our featured homes, from Carmel Valley to San Francisco and Wine Country, celebrate the handmade while tackling modern issues like ﬁre resilience and maximizing living space. We hope you enjoy reading about them.AUBRIE PICKZAHID SARDAR,EDITOR-IN-CHIEF, SHLTREDITOR@SHELTER.PARTNERS@WEARESHELTER

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18 PREMIERE ISSUE, 2025 SHLTRADVISORSJames A Lorda co-founder oflandscape ﬁrm SurfaceDesign, is a leader insustainability. He wonthe Cooper Hewitt National Design Award in 2017.and is a professor inpractice at HarvardGraduate Schoolof Design.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 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.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.Nish Nadaraja was on the foundingteam of Yelp where heled all marketing, branding and community eorts.He currently is anadvisor and consultantto a handful of consumer, restaurant/beverageand retail clients.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 Kamanihas 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-JonesKrista Coupar ThanksLundberg DesignMark English Architects Marmol RadzinerStrata LandscapeArchitectureStudio VARATaylor LombardoArchitectsThe Oce of Charles de LisleWalker WarnerWilliam Du ArchitectsThe Wiseman GroupAaron Gordon ConstructionAidlin Darling DesignAlicia Cheung DesignAT6 Architecture + Design BuildBlasen Landscape ArchitectureCrown ConstructionFeldman ArchitectureKen FulkLuca StudioFOUNDING SPONSORS

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22 PREMIERE ISSUE, 2025 SHLTRDESIGN SPOT ZAHID SARDAR Time PassagesA Painter’s ProgressSausalito painter Gordon Studer, 66, never imagined he’d become a ﬁne artist, wielding acrylic paints with un-conventional tools on enormous wood panels. Despite being a ﬁne arts major at Penn State, his path took several unexpected turns. Now, he’s revved up after his ﬁrst solo painting show, appro-priately titled “Surge” at Julie Nester gallery in Park City, Utah, where his work ﬂew o the shelves. “I love working big. I love how small I feel,” says Studer, who is tall. “I become a part of the painting. I really get a kick out of that.” It was a dierent story in the late ‘80s when he worked at the San Francisco Examiner. Back then, he was one of the few illustrators in the country skilled in using a desktop computer. Paint wasn’t his medium. He was part of the avant-garde movement of digital cre-ators. His work appeared in major pub-lications like TIME magazine, the New York Times, and Newsweek. Corpora-tions like Adobe, IBM, and AT&T sought his services.Bay Area, where have all our artists gone?“Ethereal Memories,” by Gordon Studer, above, is reminiscent of his abstract digital images—except now, you can see the hand of the artist. “I did a lot of illustrations on computers, so I paint like someone who uses Photoshop layers,” Studer explains. The limitations of early software led him to simplify the forms of real things. Not anymore. “Now, each layer suggests time.” He rented a sleek Emeryville loft and dove into a promising freelance career, until it crashed during the 2008 ﬁnan-cial crisis and the decline of print media. Unable to adapt quickly, he switched gears, building websites for clients but still found himself in debt. Then, just before the pandemic, after doing various temporary jobs—includ-ing managing an artists’ residency in Napa—he had an epiphany. He decided to try painting again. “I watched these international artists work every day, and it hit me that I also wanted to be an art-ist,” he recalls. A friend in Los Angeles oered him a studio, and for a year, he painted. “A whole universe opened up. My ﬁrst big break was the de Young Museum’s Open call for artists. I had never sold a thing, but I submitted two of my paintings, and both got into the show,” Studer says. “People in San Francisco thought I was an established artist from LA who they just hadn’t heard of.”Studer’s work also caught the eye of a manager at the Kneedler Fauchère furniture showroom, who sold it in their LA and San Francisco locations. An invitation to a group show in Calistoga followed. “It all started rolling quickly after that,” he smiles. In 2021, he found a pricey studio in the ICB building in Sau-salito, and made ends meet by leading workshops there. Private commissions followed, interior designers took notice, and now galleries are knocking. “Taking risks is expensive, but I never imagined it could be this good,” says the artist.gordonstuder.comThey are still here. In unexpected places.

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SHLTR PREMIERE ISSUE, 2025 25Get My DriftCathy Liu’s coastal musingsSan Francisco artist and designer Cathy Liu divides her time between the Big Island of Hawaii and the mainland, where she lives with her husband, architect Craig Steely, an avid surfer. In Hawaii, she is inspired by the ebb and ﬂow of natural forces, observing them in lava ﬁelds and at the water’s edge. Her earliest works were painted on plywood ocuts, evolving into colorful, amoebic compositions that followed the grain of the wood. These pieces were intended to illustrate how even the smallest organisms—much like the scraps she painted on—are part of a larger whole. Paintings on canvas followed, and her work was included in San Francisco’s premier de Young Open exhibition in 2020. Now, pieces of driftwood gathered along the California coast from Santa Cruz to Sea Ranch — some as small as 2 inches long — have become the latest ‘canvas’ for her work. “I choose the driftwood very carefully,” she says. These pieces, which wash up every day, have their own stories and also contribute to what she describes as a majestic, cosmic “whole.” After they are cured and sanded these pieces of wood are painted and given this last reverent rite in their singular journey. Facing Page, Cathy Liu’s driftwood art. Prices range from $300-$800.On display from March 2025, at Cella restaurant and bar in Monterey at the historic Cooper-Molera Adobe compound. Cella restaurant.com.Sign of the TimesA Mission gallery turns the clock backThe House of Seiko in a former watch shop on 22nd Street, is unlike other Mission galleries that mostly feature artists working with new technology.When they opened in 2023, curator Cole Solinger and co-owner Nicolas Torres, who also helms the hip wine bar Buddy’s two doors away, planned to exhibit contemporary art from around the globe. However, more than 18 shows and events in, these 30-year old gallerists are drawn to Bay Area artists from as far back as the 1950s. Visionary Bay Area artist Ariel Reynolds Parkinson who worked back then and died in 2017, was one of them. Her surrealist work, straddling the Beat, Rock and Hippie eras, was rediscovered by guest curator Zully Adler at the Oakland Library’s White Elephant sale, and lionized in a two-part show at House of Seiko. Solinger will again shine a light on the Bay Area with displays of glass artist Marvin Lipofsky’s bulbuous blown-glass cre-ations from March 22 through May 4, to coincide with a major retrospective of the master at the Crocker Art Museum. By the time Lipofsky died in 2016, he was lauded as the father of the Studio Glass movement in Berkeley and Oak-land. “I have become passionate about the poetics and the art movements of the Bay Area,” Solinger says. Raised in Silicon Valley, he studied print-making at the San Francisco Art Institute and simultaneously apprenticed at New Bohemia Signs, hand-painting signs. Later. while moonlighting in museums, doing preparatory work, he learned the rudiments of running a gallery where he can ﬁnally bring the area’s cultural DNA to the fore. “San Francisco has a dense legacy of artists whose work has not been seen enough,” he says. “Even during the ’80s and ’90s, it was a hotbed of activity and that’s a lot of historic capital.”Houseofseiko.comSand blasted studio glass piece by Marvin Lipofsky, at House of Seiko.COURTESY OF HOUSE OF SEIKO

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26 PREMIERE ISSUE, 2025 SHLTRStephen Milborrow, 66, grew up in South Africa before arriving in Silicon Valley in the early ‘80s, armed with several degrees and quickly establish-ing himself as a telecommunications engineer. Later, he moved to Petalu-ma, and about 20 years ago, he felt it was time to start drawing and painting again, as he had during one phase of his education. “I was always interested in both engi-neering and art,” he recalls, remember-ing what drew him to both disciplines when he was barely ten. “I saw a draw-ing of a rooster by Picasso and felt its totemic power.” In the family’s collec-tion of Time Life books on space and a variety of other topics, he also discov-ered an article about a three-wheeled robotic tortoise by William Grey Walter, activated by electrical commands. “It was perhaps an early example of AI, and it was very inspiring,” Milborrow reﬂects. “I wanted to create something like that. It has always been a part of who I am.” He continued to think about it. “I started painting images of robots, humans, and animals in landscapes,” he says, depicting them as sentient beings. Perhaps that helped deﬁne what he wanted to do: build a drawing machine with a ‘brain’. “I had this idea of building a machine that could draw pen and ink portraits on paper,” Milborrow explains. Despite spending many hours on ﬁgure draw-ing, portraiture was never his forte, so he wanted to explore how expressive a machine-drawn portrait could be.Machines can DrawSeeing is BelievingDESIGN SPOT When the pandemic struck, he felt an urgency to complete the project he had been tinkering with for years before he became unable to write a bunch of complicated code. A year later, he had a robot that could actually observe a subject and draw in real-time. “The machine essential-ly comprises a computer running the coded software (the brain), a swiveling video camera (the eyes), a moveable arm to which any pen can be clipped (the hand), and a drawing surface on which the ﬁne-toothed paper it draws on is placed,” Milborrow describes. The robot starts fresh each time and records no data. “A computer drawing is a fairly obvi-ous idea, but there are ideas in the code I wrote that are perhaps novel,” says the inventor modestly. That’s why he was reluctant to call it a mere ‘artbot’ and instead named it Nonoti, after a life-sustaining river near his native Durban. The machine ‘recog-nizes’ the subject’s eyes and mouth and scratches out tentative positions for them. “When a sitter moves, the ma-chine responds to changes in the sub-ject’s pose or expression, which gives the drawing a sense of life,” Milborrow observes. The monochromatic imag-es, produced in about 10 minutes, are expressive, scratchy likenesses that are decidedly not photographic. “The draw-ing takes place over time, and mistakes are made and corrected,” Milborrow says. “That history is recorded on the page, just like in an actual drawing. The struggle is visible.” It’s real. @nonoti.machineFrom top: Stephen Millborrow portrait by Nonoti; Millborrow tinkering with Nonoti; The ‘artist’ working from life. COURTESY OF STEPHEN MILLBORROW

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SHLTR PREMIERE ISSUE, 2025 29The Cutting EdgeWith an Xacto knife, she’s a lacemakerHer materials and tools are simple—pa-per, a pencil, and a sharp Xacto knife—but the intricate tracery of ﬂoriated patterns that artist Sara Burgess, 53, coaxes from linen-like sheets of white Japanese Kozo and Nepalese Lokta papers is a lacy marvel. What she calls “good connection points” hold the com-positions together. Though her work may evoke cutouts from ancient China, where paper was invented, Burgess’s high-key monochro-matic pieces are unmistakably con-temporary. They begin with a penciled pattern to guide her cutting, and the ﬁnished works are lightly mounted onto another sheet, allowing the negative and positive shapes to cast subtle shad-ows onto the backing, adding relief. Art and craftsmanship are woven into Burgess’s upbringing. Both her parents were ceramicists in Manches-ter, England, where Burgess was born, and later, on their sheep farm in North Wales. When she was ten, they moved to a remote area of Vancouver Island in Canada, where they built another studio kiln by hand. Along the way, Burgess’s mother, a back-to-the-land advocate and expert seamstress, taught her to sew and embroider—skills that inﬂu-enced some of the motifs Burgess now incorporates into her cutouts. They are the ﬁddlehead ferns, Queen Anne’s lace, nettles, brambles, and ﬂowers of her rural childhood. It wasn’t until she arrived in San Fran-cisco to pursue a master’s in illustration at the Academy of Art University that she could fully explore her artistic roots. After college, she interned at Hallmark Cards in Missouri and later returned to the Bay Area as a ceramic tableware designer for Pottery Barn before moving to a hilltop home high above Mill Valley in 2011. There, she set up a vintage press for linocut printmaking, another of her passions. The cut paper process began by ac-cident when she realized the sketch-books of drawings for linocuts piling up had many unused pages. “I start-ed cutting patterns directly into the pages of the books,” she says. “I liked the positive and negative shapes, and soon I pulled out pages for cutouts.”Recently, in a small studio in Sausali-to, she has been experimenting with paper shapes hand-stitched together to form abstract, ﬂower- or plant-in-spired collages. “I perforate the paper and then stitch it,” Burgess explains. The dark-thread stitching forms lacy patterns. “I enjoy the outcome and the variation,” she adds. “The change of pace helps to rest the body,” Burgess says, reminding us that her delicate cutouts, are very hard work.saraburgessstudio.comSara Burgess working in her studio.DESIGN SPOT COURTESY OF SARA BURGESS

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30 PREMIERE ISSUE, 2025 SHLTROne morning, San Francisco artist Paul Lanier led the way into the Artworks Foundry, a hidden gem in the East Bay that he holds dear. Not far from Berke-ley Bowl West, the foundry is nestled within a sprawling compound of manu-factories and artist studios, collectively known as the Berkeley Art Complex. It’s surrounded by open-air lots ﬁlled with foam and plaster maquettes of tow-ering sculptures. These unintentional neighbors—giant heads, soaring angels, equestrian monuments, and abstract constructions—together form a surreal, almost deserted landscape. Founded in 1976 as a small bronze casting and manufacturing business by Italian craftsman Piero Mussi, trained in ancient metallurgic arts and lost-wax techniques, the foundry soon attracted renowned artists like Stephen de Stae-bler, Mildred Howard, Peter Voulkos, Nathan Oliveira, and Lanier’s mother, the educator and sculptor Ruth Asawa.Half a century later, it remains one of Casting CallIn Berkeley, one last great foundryDESIGN SPOT the last and largest of its kind in Cal-ifornia. Since 2019, the foundry has been led by its current owner, Kambiz Mehrafshani, a 45-year-old Bay Area native who was once a customer and fell in love with the craft. He introduced changes while preserving the spirit of this treasured resource. Spanning over 25,000 square feet and anchored by a World War II-era water tower that Mussi converted into his home, the foundry now boasts cutting-edge technologies like 3D printing, CNC machining, and other forms of digital manufacturing. “Maquettes can be scaled up faster to full-size sculptures with the click of a mouse,” Mehrafshani says, pointing to the ever-increasing demand for monu-mental work, which may require bigger and more ecient facilities in the future. More than 2,000 active artists rely on the foundry’s expertise, with 25 specialists—some of whom are artists themselves—crafting new bronzes and restoring old reliefs and monuments from around the world. It’s a hive of ac-tivity. Inside nearly every structure that contains kilns, crucibles and workshops, casts are being made, large works are being welded together with blowtorch-es, and completed sculptures are being prepared for their ﬁnal patinas before showtime. “At the end of each day, our hands are dirty and our ears are ringing from the sounds of metal,” Mehrafshani says. “But this work is life-giving.”Artworksfoundry.comAbove, cast bronze gures; top right, a welder.ZAHID SARDARARTWORKS FOUNDRY

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SHLTR PREMIERE ISSUE, 2025 33pression for the fashion designer. In such an inspiring setting, Tanov and her ‘guests’ can slow down, take the weight o their feet and sit down for a conversation. The table is always set with beautiful things, and the bed is always made. Clearly, Tanov resists modern tech-nologies and materials, so although the made-to-order furniture ranging from $1240-$8600 can be ordered in an instant online, it will take several weeks to arrive. Even in a sped-up tech age, Slow Design is worth the wait? Ericatanov.comHouse ProudA fashion maven turns to furnishingsDESIGN SPOTTop, the front door to Erica Tanov Atelier; Above, Tanov’s Yves bench covered in her fabric. Berkeley clothing designer Erica Tanov has literally found a home for her dor-mant passion: interior design. Inside a refurbished 1870s Italianate Victorian mansion she calls the Erica Tanov Atelier, the designer has arranged furniture ﬁnds from estate sales alongside her Yves bench, inspired by vintage furniture. “I love to mix design styles,” explains Tanov, and so its spare silhouette with turned wood legs is both Modern and Classical at the same time, and covered in contempo-rary printed canvas of her own design. Sourced linen, velvet and mohair fabrics are optional. Tanov’s recently-launched three-story atelier, where selected ﬁnds and the Yves line are displayed artfully against bare plaster walls, echoes the sophisticated earth-toned aesthetic of her long-time fashion boutique, which is only paces away from the mansion. The Atelier also serves as a salon. Tanov sometimes plays ‘hostess’, by ap-pointment, for groups and events such as San Francisco Design Week amid the ever-changing inventory of furnishings — and fashion is ever present. Silken robes and some garments, hand-em-broidered or appliquéd in India with centuries-old motifs, are shown along-side 19th century Spanish Revival fur-niture, mid-century modern objets and handcrafted one-of-a-kind sculpture. The tableaus of repurposed objects as well as revived crafts and patterns for her lines of wallpaper, curtains, linens, and bath tiles (made by Clé) are just dierent avenues of glamorous self-ex-COURTESY ERICA TANOV

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34 PREMIERE ISSUE, 2025 SHLTRcan be framed as broadsides. “People are visibly moved by it all,” he says.His “artifact sessions” at the Legion of Honor while he was an artist in resi-dence at the Fine Arts Museums during National Poetry Month in 2024, were popular. One performance took place in front of a mummiﬁed Ibis from Ancient Egypt, where he conjured up descrip-tive, ekphrasis poems that referenced Thoth, the god of writing, who Egyp-tians depicted as the now critically endangered bird. At a Google Cloud company event, Bernthal co-created postcards with participating guests that anyone at the event could read. “It was gmail using analog rather than new technology,” he On City StreetsJust three words will get you art Above, Ben Bernthal outside his home.Right, the poet working on a poem.Top, a view of the now repurposed synagogue.You won’t ﬁnd Ben Bernthal, a 36-year-old conceptual artist and founder of Strangers’ Poems, careening down hillsides like characters in the iconic TV series, “The Streets of San Fran-cisco.” Instead, you’ll see him drawing and writing poetry in the ﬂattest parts of town such as the Mission, the Fer-ry Plaza and Fort Mason. There, next to his ‘poetry table’ on wheels, he asks customers a few questions about themselves and then leads them into a ritual or “divination” that sometimes involves hammering a nail into a closed book. Participants choose from among the words the nail strikes and Bernthal, tapping away on a vintage typewriter, incorporates them into a poem. Some-times he types on illustrated sheets that DESIGN SPOT explains. “Even if it is not poetry in form it feels poetic in essence.” Born to a Lutheran music theory professor and pipe organist, Bernthal left Valparaiso, Indiana in 2016 to teach English in Japan. He later followed a girlfriend to Nashville, North Carolina where he ﬁrst began his street gigs. “I had gone to school for audio engi-neering and fell in love with poetry,” he says. Inspired by artist Laurie Ander-son, he realized that all he needed was himself, a few objects and the street. “I made my own path,” he says. He continued performing worldwide until, by serendipity, he landed at his apartment in a subdivided 1908 syna-gogue in the Mission. An artists’ haven since the mid-1900s, it was once home to the renowned 1980s sculptor, Frida Koblick. Its current landlord, Dan Fried-lander, a former inﬂuential curator, in-troduced avant garde furniture (in spirit, akin to Koblick’s cast acrylic sculptures) at his now-defunct Limn Furniture store in San Francisco. Some of Friedland-er’s pieces, including a winged Birdie chandelier by Ingo Maurer, linger in the apartment, which Bernthal shares with a fellow artist. The repurposed loft-like building retains many original details, including windows with Star of David motifs. Large skylights ﬂood light into what was likely once part of the congregation hall, giving Bernthal an alternative salon when the weather turns. This space allows him to act as a micro-publisher, creating limited edition poetry broadsides. “Setting up an in-stallation inside rather than on a street corner, guerrilla style, is ok,” he says.@BbernthalCESAR RUBIO

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SHLTR PREMIERE ISSUE, 2025 39MODERN HEIRLOOM LINEN QUILTS & ACCESSORIESMATHILDEHOME.COM • @ MATHILDEHOMEsmall workshops teaching people how to be self-sucient — for example, by learning to draw, screen print, make ceramics, and craft other useful every-day objects. “The Bay Area has dier-ent threads of history and culture that converge here,” Utne says. “These are just ways of linking that world.”learningbyhand.org@learningbyhand At Bridge, there are others who blend art with technology. Just a few doors down from Eli Utne’s studio is the bustling workshop of David Solnit, the Empowering graphicsMaking a dierence with art An unlikely arts enclave exists within a gated storage ‘park’ not far from the Richmond ferry terminal in the East Bay. Opened in 1993 as Bridge Storage, with hundreds of storage units and ship-ping containers, it gradually evolved to include art-making and gallery spaces after Je Wright, the son of the founder, repurposed several storage units into aordable, climate-controlled art stu-dios. Now known as Bridge Storage & ArtSpace (with BridgeMakerARTS as its latest non-proﬁt oshoot), it is also a vibrant gathering spot, oering shared workshop and gallery spaces for creators of music, art and graphics. Among the younger artists at Bridge is Eli Utne, 34, son of the founders of The Utne Reader, an inﬂuential coun-terculture print journal that explored topics like the environment, spirituality, technology, and the arts. In the same spirit, Utne is a musician, artist, teacher, and eco-conscious land management enthusiast all rolled into one. He has been based at Bridge for nearly seven years, working out of a 100-square-foot pre-fabricated shed that he’s decorated with murals and outﬁtted with recording equipment. True to the times, he draws on his iPad, records music on his phone, and mixes it on his computer.“I am a social artist,” he says. “In my career as an artist and educator, I’m focused on performing, songwriting, composition, and recording.”He per-forms across the country — including a music pop-up at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis — teaches guitar, sings in an avant-garde Oakland choir, and has released two vinyl albums of his music. He has also founded Learning by Hand, an esoteric company that oers practical, hands-on education through DESIGN SPOT 61-year-old co-founder of the inﬂuential 20th-century counterculture movement, Art and Revolution. A carpenter, pup-peteer, graphic artist, and community organizer, Solnit works out of a large pre-fab structure where volunteers and clients help screen-print political protest posters and banners expressing everything from worker solidarity to concerns about climate change. Solnit has co-authored three books on these topics, including one with his sister, the renowned feminist/activist author Rebecca Solnit. It’s no surprise their mother also organized neighborhood groups in Marin. The often visually arresting artifacts produced in Solnit’s shop are frequent-ly designed by him on a computer or directly cut onto Rubylith stencils, then turned into silk screens for printing. These works represent some of the Bay Area’s most impactful messaging, partly because their graphics are legible from afar. One timely collage, created digitally just after the Paciﬁc Palisades ﬁre, isn’t a protest piece but an ode to Los Angeles.“I always wanted to be an artist but didn’t know how it could con-tribute to social change. Then I realized public action is a form of art,” he said. @davidsolnitAbove, Eli Utne picks out a printed Learning by Hand bag, Right, David Solnit’s graphics. DAVID SOLNIT

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SHLTR PREMIERE ISSUE, 2025 37SHLTR PREMIERE ISSUE, 2025 39MODERN HEIRLOOM LINEN QUILTS & ACCESSORIESMATHILDEHOME.COM • @ MATHILDEHOMEsmall workshops teaching people how to be self-sucient — for example, by learning to draw, screen print, make ceramics, and craft other useful every-day objects. “The Bay Area has dier-ent threads of history and culture that converge here,” Utne says. “These are just ways of linking that world.”learningbyhand.org@learningbyhand At Bridge, there are others who blend art with technology. Just a few doors down from Eli Utne’s studio is the bustling workshop of David Solnit, the Empowering graphicsMaking a dierence with art An unlikely arts enclave exists within a gated storage ‘park’ not far from the Richmond ferry terminal in the East Bay. Opened in 1993 as Bridge Storage, with hundreds of storage units and ship-ping containers, it gradually evolved to include art-making and gallery spaces after Je Wright, the son of the founder, repurposed several storage units into aordable, climate-controlled art stu-dios. Now known as Bridge Storage & ArtSpace (with BridgeMakerARTS as its latest non-proﬁt oshoot), it is also a vibrant gathering spot, oering shared workshop and gallery spaces for creators of music, art and graphics. Among the younger artists at Bridge is Eli Utne, 34, son of the founders of The Utne Reader, an inﬂuential coun-terculture print journal that explored topics like the environment, spirituality, technology, and the arts. In the same spirit, Utne is a musician, artist, teacher, and eco-conscious land management enthusiast all rolled into one. He has been based at Bridge for nearly seven years, working out of a 100-square-foot pre-fabricated shed that he’s decorated with murals and outﬁtted with recording equipment. True to the times, he draws on his iPad, records music on his phone, and mixes it on his computer.“I am a social artist,” he says. “In my career as an artist and educator, I’m focused on performing, songwriting, composition, and recording.”He per-forms across the country — including a music pop-up at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis — teaches guitar, sings in an avant-garde Oakland choir, and has released two vinyl albums of his music. He has also founded Learning by Hand, an esoteric company that oers practical, hands-on education through DESIGN SPOT 61-year-old co-founder of the inﬂuential 20th-century counterculture movement, Art and Revolution. A carpenter, pup-peteer, graphic artist, and community organizer, Solnit works out of a large pre-fab structure where volunteers and clients help screen-print political protest posters and banners expressing everything from worker solidarity to concerns about climate change. Solnit has co-authored three books on these topics, including one with his sister, the renowned feminist/activist author Rebecca Solnit. It’s no surprise their mother also organized neighborhood groups in Marin. The often visually arresting artifacts produced in Solnit’s shop are frequent-ly designed by him on a computer or directly cut onto Rubylith stencils, then turned into silk screens for printing. These works represent some of the Bay Area’s most impactful messaging, partly because their graphics are legible from afar. One timely collage, created digitally just after the Paciﬁc Palisades ﬁre, isn’t a protest piece but an ode to Los Angeles.“I always wanted to be an artist but didn’t know how it could con-tribute to social change. Then I realized public action is a form of art,” he said. @davidsolnitAbove, Eli Utne picks out a printed Learning by Hand bag, Right, David Solnit’s graphics. DAVID SOLNIT

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SHLTR PREMIERE ISSUE, 2025 45Split #19 bench (facing and below) by Nick Polansky is made from recycled wood, river rocks and copper pipes. The ‘feet’ are granite kerb blocks. $12,500. nickpolansky.comSheep lounge chair by Studio Ahead, inspired by Persian divans, is covered with felted merino wool fabric. $14,268 in wool; $10,056, customer’s own fabric. Studioahead.comInspired by one lens of a pair of dark glasses, designer Ted Bo-erner’s Monocle mirrors, made of brass or stainless steel and wood substrate, are suspended from metal pegs. Sizes and prices vary. Hewnsf.comBlu Lounge from MANOSis an elegant concrete chaisedesigned by Concreteworks, and hand cast in California. $1,750.Manos-made.comLISA BOQUIREN OBJECTSSigned Kozo lanterns of Douglas ﬁr and mulberry bark paper, created by Pt. Reyes artist John Gnorski have bird (shown), horse and dancing, ﬁgure motifs. $ 1,200. Johngnorski.comApollo Chair, of cast ‘stone’ to be used outdoors; plumbed and wired, it instantly provides a comfortable 120° warm seat. From Galanter & Jones, $1,550Galanterandjones.comLocally-designed, accessible materials. Timeless.ALL IMAGES COURTESY OF DESIGNERS

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SHLTR PREMIERE ISSUE, 2025 49Architect Jess Field, 48, who surfed the California coast with his father, Stan Field, long before he joined their name-sake Palo Alto ﬁrm, Field Architecture, felt an immediate thrill when was hired in 2017 to design a Big Sur cliside home. “I’ve always been mesmerized by these clis,” said Field. “When you’re in the ocean, you can see the very edge of the continent.” Field’s deep connection to nature traces back to his childhood in Johan-nesburg, South Africa, where his father, who trained under Lou Kahn, ﬁrst handed him a pencil and said, “Speak.” Since then, drawing became a language for Field to describe the world around him. Countless sketchbooks ﬁlled with drawings of his father’s homing pi-geons, and random weaver birds, rocky landscapes, and unusual rock outcrop-pings mark the evolution of his observa-tions. Now, Big Sur’s striking geology of layered, sedimentary rocks—eroded by the Paciﬁc into dramatic, striated clis—provided the inspiration for a poetic, modernist retreat for a San Francisco couple and their two young children, all of whom are captivated by the area’s unique beauty. Completed in 2023, the home am-pliﬁes a collective Bay Area instinct to integrate architecture into the natural A Big Sur home that speaks the languageof the landscapeAbove, the solid wood front door, set in a thick wall clad in stone, opens to an entry hall. In-side, the exterior stone path gives way to raised wood oors and a Japan-inspired genkan or meditative space.Left, stone-clad walls that echo cliff faces are this home’s recurring leitmotif.

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56 PREMIERE ISSUE, 2025 SHLTRAbove and right, the living room and oth-er public spaces have ribbed hardwood ceilings that ow out to meet hemlock wood softs under roof overhangs. Field designed the wood and leather armchairs to echo the architecture. Niches in the thick walls or “pylons”are for display-ing art objets. Beyond the surrounding cypresses, is the Pacic.and a genkan entry hall, both above a lower-level guest suite. The meditative entry spaces open into a 60-foot-long, glass-walled bridge that spans the ravine. “You make a deliberate change in direction as you enter the bridge, like a surfer might,” says Field. The intention is to gradually reveal both the ravine and the main 6,700 square-foot home by degrees. At the far end of the bridge, the house—composed of a split-level bar-shaped structure, with public spac-es above and bedrooms below—faces the ocean. To the east, oce spaces

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SHLTR PREMIERE ISSUE, 2025 67 Arranged roughly in an inverted T-shaped plan, the two structures fea-ture thick, battered walls clad in random dark and light stone ribbons over steel framing. They rise from the ground like faceted clis, topped with narrow, ﬁxed and operable clerestory windows, grav-el-covered ﬂat roofs with deep over-hangs, and angled hemlock wood-clad sots that seem to ﬂoat above. Field sees a clear historic reference to Frank Lloyd Wright’s 1952 Clinton Walker House in nearby Carmel, which features a stone skirt anchoring it to the shore. “We used a similar tactic to mediate between the ground and the building,” Field notes. However, while Wright’s design evokes the image of a low boat drifting toward the sea, Field’s stone ‘clis’ function as a lookout, punc-tuated by vertical slits and wide open-ings that frame views. On the south side of the house, where there are glass sliding doors as well, thick walls provide thermal mass, and deep roof overhangs modulate both heat and light during the summer months. The rugged materi-als, chosen for their durability in the salt-laden air, also reﬂect the surround-ing environment. “We view this as a research project from which we will always learn,” Field concludes. “It’s designed to last.”

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SHLTR PREMIERE ISSUE, 2025 69A Meadow PreservedBY KENDRA BOUTELLPHOTOS BY JOE FLETCHERSan Francisco architect Mark English, who founded his eponymous ﬁrm in 1992, long dreamed of designing a home in Carmel Valley’s exclusive, 20,000-acre Santa Lucia Preserve. Hav-ing grown up in the rural east foothills of nearby Santa Clara County amid hills and nature, he was primed for it. English recently got his wish with a commission from clients originally from Korea, who wanted a compound fusing California living with their own culture. The Preserve is part of a conservation land trust that allows very little building, and understandably has very deﬁned guidelines for what gets built. The site on the valley ﬂoor included a great meadow of native grasses and wild-The Carmel Valley site was spectacular. Architect Mark English stepped aside and letnature rule. Architect Mark English and Alterra Land-scape Design worked collaboratively on this Santa Lucia Preserve compound, integrating the cascading structure into the landscape with naturalistic plantings and wood screens.

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72 PREMIERE ISSUE, 2025 SHLTRﬂowers punctuated by dramatic Coast and Valley Oak trees and that’s where the wife, with an architecture degree from the Rhode Island School of Design, wanted a modern interpretation of tra-ditional Korean courtyard houses known as hanoks. Her husband, a healthcare entrepreneur, is involved with interna-tional business. In addition to providing a home for their two college-age sons and visiting family, they needed the compound to be a place for visiting professionals to meet and work. Hanoks orientate buildings to the land and seasons, connecting people to na-ture rather than merely shielding them. This Korean concept aligns with Califor-nia Modernism, which blurs the bound-aries between indoor and outdoor spaces, and with English’s approach of making each project a thoughtful dialogue with the site’s topography. It also relates to his deep love of the West. “In Italy, where I attended grad school, I saw an Ansel Adams photogra-phy exhibit featuring the rolling hills of California,” he recalls. “I got homesick.” To protect the unspoiled terrain and ensure thoughtful design decisions, English enlisted Arterra Landscape Architects from the outset. The ﬁrm had worked on several estates at the Preserve and was familiar with the process, which consisted of no less than ﬁve hearings before a tough design review board. For English, the meadow became the 9,200 square-foot design’s Korean hanok-style features are visible in screened and white oak display shelf-linedentryways. Right, next to a Riva 1920 Curve bench by Brodie Neill, a ramp ows up into the family wing of the Z-form home.

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SHLTR PREMIERE ISSUE, 2025 75focal point. With a physical model to convince the board, he sought to leave the meadow intact and build the house and a separate garage and guesthouse only on its edges. The important thing was “the beauty of the meadow bor-dered by giant oaks like big rock out-croppings,” he explained, pointing to the two-story home that now zig-zags, and follows the contours of the land wrapping around the extraordinary heritage oak trees. The living pavilion designated for Below, the family room where parents, children, and visiting relatives gather. Left, A ramp continues deeper into the private wing, around an uplit display case that doubles as a railing. A collection of German hand-blown glass vases by Guaxs, captures the light. Large windowsframe heritage oaks outside.business gatherings progresses down the slope. It features separate sec-tions linked by screened verandas and wheelchair-accessible ramps, with Korean-inspired ﬂat roofs for the foyer, library, and sunken living room. English selected materials to meld with the set-ting: Bluestone paving, white oak cab-inetry, quartz counters, dark concrete, and weathered steel. A key design element is the distinctive vertical cedar wood screens that the contractor Jim Daily hand crafted in his Portola Valley

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SHLTR PREMIERE ISSUE, 2025 79Builders’ workshop. During the day, they ﬁlter sunlight streaming in through the glass walls, while providing privacy once the sun sets. Spaces designed for business gath-erings transition seamlessly into private quarters, which include a family room, dining area, and kitchen. A bedroom wing encompasses two primary bed-room suites separated by a shared dressing room. English’s perforated steel staircase that snakes around an elevator shaft, is another feature craft-ed locally. Upstairs are three ensuite bedrooms and a yoga studio, while a subterranean level contains the media room and wine cellar. Outside the main house, Arterra organized the exterior space into a central plaza that leads to the guest house. Red-trunked madrones complement the compound’s architec-ture, and native grasses and perennials echo the colors and textures of the preserved meadow. Completed in 2023, Meadow House, which garnered numerous national and international awards for its hand-crafted elegance and siting, has made English a darling of the Preserve where he already has another commission. The trick was “to ﬂow with the landscape,” he says.English’s interpretation of classic Korean design is more clearly evident in heavy wood beams, quarter-sawn white oak cabinetry and walls that resemble moveable screens in twin primary bedrooms on the ground level. The bathroom windows in each are placed high for privacy.

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SHLTR PREMIERE ISSUE, 2025 83While Christine Lin’s path to San Fran-cisco and a career in interior design was not exactly straightforward, it has led to a very good place: a singular home in the city’s Potrero Hill neigh-borhood that she shares with her tech entrepreneur husband, Ankur Pansari, and their 4-year-old son, Apollo; as well as a practice, Form + Field, that is in the midst of some of its most auda-cious projects yet. Growing up in Delaware, Lin was unfamiliar with interior design as a profession. “I just wasn’t exposed to it,” she says. A high school art teacher did, however, suggest that Lin consider a future in architecture. So she picked up a book on the subject and dragged her parents to Fallingwater, the iconic Frank Lloyd Wright-designed house in Pennsylvania. “What I loved about architecture was thinking about how After reimagining her career path, she has emerged as a sought-after interior designer.Opposite: Interior designer Christine Lin in her dining room, with art by Age-lio Batle from Jeffrey Spahn Gallery.Top: The collaboration between the homeowner and John Lum Architecture yielded a modern gem.Bottom: A curved wall and yellow door offset the rectilinear facade, which is mostly black and white.

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84 PREMIERE ISSUE, 2005 SHLTROpposite: The hallway that accesses both units in the four-story building is covered in Benjamin Moore’s Lemon Grove.Above: The kitchen features Silestone countertops, a backsplash composed of penny mosaic tiles from Waterworks and stools by Hay. one experiences a space — the light, the volume, the proportions,” she says. Lin went on to study architecture and mechanical engineering at MIT, but an architecture internship steered her from that vocation. “The day-to-day work — doing the drawings, the code, all the regulations around it — that wasn’t quite a ﬁt for me because I liked materials, furniture and more of what you touch,” she explains. After college, she landed in Colorado, joining the mechanical engi-neering team for workstation comput-ers at Hewlett Packard. She ultimately transitioned into a project management role, which she enjoyed and led her to business school at UC Berkeley. With an MBA in hand, she held posi-tions at various tech companies. “I loved the cross-functional aspect — working with engineers, designers and marketing people,” she says. “And you had to have a vision for the product.” Although the process appealed to her, the products didn’t align with her passions. Now, with interior design, Lin relies on skills she cultivated in the tech industry, but “the product is the home, instead of software,” she notes.Her professional pivot can be traced to 2015, when Pansari purchased a 1970s house in Santa Cruz. “It had great bones, but needed a lot of updating,” she recalls. As she managed the construction and design, Lin wondered: Why am I not in design? She put the word out in her circle that she was taking on interior design projects. It turns out, the parents of an MIT roommate needed help with their 10,000-square-foot Atherton abode. The renovation essentially launched Form + Field in 2017. The following year, Lin and Pansari tack-led their residence in Potrero Hill. Work-ing with architect John Lum, the couple more than doubled the square footage of a single-unit two-story dwelling — adding two ﬂoors for a second, upper unit where they currently live. “It was nice that some of the decisions were not based sole-ly on costs, but were about quality and aesthetics,” Lum says. “And she has such a stylish vision, it was super fun working with her.” Another perk: Lin’s architecture background meant that the two “spoke the same language — like shorthand,” he observes. As a result of the collaboration, the nondescript 1950s building has been transformed into a modern gem, worthy of inclusion in the 2024 American Institute of Architects San Francisco (AIASF) Home Tours. A curved exterior wall, clad in black Thermory wood that mimics the look of the

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Opposite: Four-year-old Apollo’s bedroom — par-tially painted in Benjamin Moore’s Santorini Blue — has a daybed from Flexa and Brutalist oak dining chair, as well as the Frog rug from The Rug Company layered over a striped rug from Revival.Top: In the primary bedroom, the headboard up-holstered in Lelièvre’s Merlin motif, end table from Dowel Furniture in a custom color and sconce by Charlotte Perriand combine to artful effect.Bottom: Opposite the bed is a sideboard by Giovanni Michelucci Torbecchia and painting by Kirstine Reiner Hansen from Jack Fischer Gallery.Japanese charring technique of shou sugi ban, softens the rectilinear architecture. And the front door is “the perfect yel-low — welcoming and cheerful,” Lin says. The same hue, Benjamin Moore’s Lemon Grove, covers the hallway accessing both units. Inside hers, a yellow volume con-tains an elevator, kitchen appliances and pantry space. Lin’s design scheme features a deft mix of vintage and new, such as the chairs by Afra and Tobia Scarpa ﬂanking the dining table by Michael Anastassiades, along with bespoke elements like a headboard upholstered in a Leliévre enchanted forest motif. The living room includes a chair that Lin designed and handmade in a class at MIT, from creating the curved seat by cutting, steaming and bending the cherry wood to gluing, sanding and assembling the components. It marks her only foray into furniture-making — thus far, that is. She is in the early stages of developing a line, with the chair a jump-ing-o point. Meanwhile, thanks in part to exquisite custom and novel details, Form + Field’s latest projects are among its most cre-atively fulﬁlling. Take the SoMa home

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90 PREMIERE ISSUE, 2025 SHLTRAbove: The powder room (situated behind the living room) includes a pendant light by Allied Maker, mirror by Gio Ponti and wall-paper by Maharam.Right: In the living room, a Robert Arneson vase from Jeffrey Spahn Gallery rests on a USM media console.whose previous owner drew design inspiration from Star Trek. The un-conventional interiors have prompted out-of-the-box thinking by Lin. Hence, cabinetry comprising translucent re-cycled plastic that evokes the original iMac and allows contents to be visible. “We’re doing stu that’s not typical at all,” she enthuses. “It’s going to be real-ly idiosyncratic, interesting work, using materials and colors we haven’t used before.” One might say that her ﬁrm is boldly going where it hasn’t gone before.

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96 PREMIERE ISSUE, 2025 SHLTRMount Saint Helena and layers of rolling hills speckled with more trees. There are vineyards and farms tucked into valleys and practically no other homes in sight but for a tiny box on a distant hill. And still, the property is only 5 miles from downtown Healdsburg. It’s an epic landscape that recalls the hus-band’s youth in South Africa. “Being raised in South Africa instilled a love of being out in the bush and feeling connected to the land,” says architect Chris Roach. “The seemingly undisturbed lands of Healds-burg were a reminder of his childhood days.” Upon choosing the lot, the husband planned for the home to be a legacy for his family, a place where his children would roam and learn to appreciate the wild coun-tryside the way he did. To facilitate connection with the land, the architects — Roach, Maura Abernethy, Andy Drake, Nick Brown, and Luis Tilano — envi-sioned a house that’s practically woven with the terrain, a home that pulls the family outside, and gives the feeling of being outdoors while inside. And, as the hills of Healdsburg are ﬁre country, they also imag-ined a home that would be ﬁre-resistant. In September of 2020, the site supervisor for the project sent a video of himself standing on the house’s recently completed foun-dation, looking at an orange sky as CalFire C-130 ﬂew overhead. “Flames from the Walbridge Fire were visible from the site, The living, dining, and kitchen areas, as well as the bedrooms, tie to a wraparound porch and the outdoors via massive glass doors that slide open, removing the boundary between interior and exterior. Indoors, the sectional is by Antonio Citterio for Flexform, and the armchair is by Holly Hunt. Outdoors, the dining table and chairs are by Janus et Cie, and the rockers are by Brown Jordan.

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98 PREMIERE ISSUE, 2025 SHLTRand we temporarily halted construction,” says Abernethy. “It was a moment that armed our decisions regarding materials and ﬁre-protection strategy.” Early in the design process, with ﬁre resis-tance and a tie to nature in mind, Roach camped on the property for 24 hours in an eort to learn its intricacies. “I went on the summer solstice and hiked its 15 acres, watching where the sun rose and set and where the winds were coming from,” he says. With the other architects, Roach determined the house should be sited on the southern side, acting as a guardrail for a steep slope and a shade for sun exposure. When it came to house’s form, the archi-tects decided on a simple but hardworking 180-foot rectangle with a slight bend towards the middle, a bend Abernethy likens to a knuckle. The form enhances the function of a guardrail, creates passive ventilation, and facilitates cinematic views. “The rationale was for every room in the house to have a window on the south side that looks to a wall of pine trees,” explains Roach. The eastern wing aligns with views of the sunrise and Mount Saint Helena, while the western wing aligns with sunset vistas. The bend in the house’s form separates the public wing—the kitchen, dining, and living spaces—from the private bedroom wing, and lets the house partially wraparound the yard, outdoor din-ing-and-kitchen area, pool house, and nega-tive-edge pool, which delivers 40,000 gallons of water in a ﬁre emergency via a connected ﬁre hydrant. Massive glass pocket doors slide open to a 180-foot-long covered breezeway that borders the northern façade and the out-door areas beyond. Like the pool, the home’s cladding—a protective shell of non-combustible stand-ing-seam zinc—is at once sleek and function-al. The shed-style zinc roof performs, too, as it features solar hot water and photovoltaics. “We worked with a company named Frontline on the design and installation of remotely deployed roof-mounted sprinklers and foam dispersion to prevent embers,” says Aber-nethy. Tesla Powerwall batteries, a backup generator, two 8,500-gallon concrete water tanks, and a ﬁltration system create added infrastructure. Studio VARA landscape designer Graham Quinn outﬁtted the immediate surround with a ground sprinkler system, ﬁre-resis-tant plantings, a hardscape with gravel, and scalloped Cor-Ten retaining walls. With the architects, Quinn also strategically cleared Above, the outdoor kitchen-and-dining area, where the family spends time together, there is a wood red pizza oven from Mugnaini Imports.Right, Concrete paving on the porch connects to polished concrete ooring on the interior, giving the sensation of remaining outdoors while on the interior. The kitchen is outtted with custom oak cabinetry by Fairweather & Associates and pendants by Gabriel Scott.

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trees and brush on the site, creating a series of hiking trails that act as ﬁre breaks. A restrained materials palette of concrete, wood, stone, and metal work in concert with the ruggedness of the landscape and blur the line between the interior and the outdoors. “If you’re outside by the pool and walk into the living-and-dining room, there’s still concrete beneath your feet,” says Ab-ernethy. The site’s oak trees are reﬂected in the wire-brushed European white oak ﬂoor-ing in the bedroom wing, the oak cabinetry of the kitchen, and the oak vanities in the bathrooms. Stone counters and ﬂoor-to-ceiling louvres made from Alaskan yellow cedar—a ﬁre-resistant wood—oer more natural textures. And in the living room, a massive salvaged redwood tree slab hangs like artwork on a wall. “The furnishings are in very neutral colors,” says Abernethy, who designed the interior with Zoe Hsu, Jacque-line Lytle, Yennifer Pedraza, and Gail Avila.The 3,896-square-foot home is as open, ﬂuid, and organic as it is protective and sus-tainable. “This house proves it’s possible to build resiliently in ﬁre country,” says Roach. “The most conservative thing we can do is not build in the wild, but there are already people there.” According to Roach and Ab-ernethy, there’s risk almost everywhere and as such, architects and designers are having to think bigger. “This led us to think beyond landscape and site design,” says Roach. The architects and designers researched the insurance industry and forest management, and spoke with their professional communi-Above, integrated oak cabinetry wraps around the headboard in one of the bedrooms.Left, Alaskan yellow cedar louvres create streams of light and shadow on the walls, oor, and ceiling of a shower.Opposite, a pendant by Bertjan Pot suspends near a bunk bed crafted by CASA Kids in the children’s room.

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SHLTR PREMIERE ISSUE, 2025 103ty, gaining new ideas they folded into their own knowledge base. Those lessons created a new design system that can be applied to future projects. “This is where we maybe have a unique take,” says Roach. “We entered this project as architects and designers, but it opened up a wildﬁre zone practice we’re currently using across many projects—we’ve learned to utilize risk mitiga-tion strategies and embrace them not just as utilitarian things, but as part of design.” Above, the negative-edge pool looks to the hills, and valleys of the wine-country landscape. A Cor-Ten steel retaining wall and a built-in wood bench blend in.Left, at night, the interior rooms are reected in the pool. The swing lounger is by Dedon.

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106 PREMIERE ISSUE, 2025 SHLTR“What researchers have discovered in ‘Blue Zone’ areas is that growing your own food is closely tied to longevi-ty,” says landscape designer Chris-tian Douglas. This insight has been a guiding principle for him since he left the South of England, where he grew up tending his father’s postwar victo-ry garden. As a professional garden designer, he later earned awards for creating beautifully-planted estates. Now based in San Rafael, he runs his own garden design ﬁrm, which blends both his passion and expertise. He de-signs gardens that are not only “beau-tiful but also delicious,” combining aes-thetics with functionality. His elegant outdoor spaces, designed for leisure while promoting food literacy and culinary independence, found a deep resonance during the pandemic. After the lockdown, many of his clients—such as TV host and chef Tyler Florence—retreated into their newly-completed gardens, marveling at how they had ﬂourished. Along with lush ornamen-tal plantings, these gardens became productive home ‘farms,’ oering fresh herbs, vegetables, and greens. This particular garden, shown in Douglas’s new book, The Food Forward Garden, by Artisan, is in Kentﬁeld on a third of an acre. It was designed for a young family that had relocated from San Francisco with their two elementa-ry-aged boys. “She didn’t want some-thing formal or overly manicured,” says Douglas. “She envisioned a homestead, like an old farmhouse.” The existing Cape Cod-style manor featured stan-dard lawns, concrete paving, olive trees, lavender, and a backyard with lit-tle activity. Douglas introduced vibrant ﬂowers, a chicken coop for fresh eggs, and an apiary for the owner, who has a fondness for bees. He also installed recycled redwood beam planter boxes along the home’s stone perimeter near the pool, ideal for growing vegetables and fruit. A sunny area of the gar-den, complete with a ﬁre pit for cozy evenings, is designed for dining and entertainment. Meanwhile, the side gar-den, shaded and serene, now features a rocky creek with rustic plank bridg-es. It’s a playground for the kids, who can forage for alpine strawberries and huckleberries growing in the cracks. “Frogs, insects, and bugs love it there too,” Douglas chuckles. christian-douglas.com

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SHLTR PREMIERE ISSUE, 2025 109Located on a steep hillside in San Anselmo, Andrew and Elena’s house is hard to get to, let alone build upon. But the remote feeling of the forested setting is what inspired the couple, who are based in San Francisco, to purchase the property as a weekend retreat—even though it needed a lot of work. The dated 1950s main house was billed an “investment opportunity” and was accompanied by an unﬁnished ADU. Elena and Andrew, both of whom work in the tech industry, decided to contact the ADU’s architect to help complete it. As it turns out, the archi-tect was Casper Mork-Ulnes, who has a long history designing small dwellings. In 2004, he founded a company called Modern Cabana, specializing in prefab backyard structures, which he later sold. “Fitting a lot of stu into a small foot-print is an interesting problem for us,” he says. The original client asked Mork-Ulnes and his team to create an ADU on the 312-square-foot foundation of the house’s garage, and that it include a separate bedroom for his daughter. PHOTOS BY BRUCE DAMONTEThe ADU is built on the foundation of the main house’s garage. The architects added a cantile-vered deck, which required a new foundation. Light gray ber-cement panels, which are used for the roof as well as the siding, have begun to patina like concrete.

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The architects also had to contend with the steep hillside behind the garage, which limited the site’s exposure to natural light.The design handles both con-straints, carving out both lightand space. The ADU is essentially a studio apartment, and necessitiesfor living are carefully organized along two walls, including a Mur-phy bed. But it also has a small loft area that can function as an additional bedroom. The roof soars upward to peek over thecrest of the hill, bringing light in through a band of operable clere-story windows. The architects also added a deck that extends the ADU’s limited space outside. Because Andrew and Elena got involved before the ADU was completed, they were able to make some modiﬁcations to the original design. They opted for a dishwasher instead of a stacked washer and dryer and in-stalled an under-the-counter fridge in lieu of a full-size fridge in favor of more counter space. To give them even more counter space, the architects designed a kitchen island on wheels. When it’s parallel A green-tiled shower also opens to the outside, creating the feel of an outdoor shower. When closed, the interior shower door doubles as a full-length mirror.

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to the rest of the kitchen, it’s an island, and when it’s perpendicular, it’s a dining table. Instead of a front door and tiny foyer, there is now a built-in sofa and storage cubbies, and the entrance is through the sliding glass doors. The couple plans to renovate the main house with the help of Mork-Ulnes Architects and spend most of their weekends in the ADU with their two young children, who share the secret loft bedroom. “I always wanted to get a camper van, and this house is like one,” says Andrew. “It’s very compact, and everyone can spend the night packed together in the middle of nature. It’s very fun.”Excerpted by permission from “The Well-Designed Accessory Dwelling Unit: Fitting Great Architecture into Small Spaces”, by Lydia Lee, published by Schiffer Publishing. $35. Schifferbooks.comBecause it has locking casters, the kitchenisland can easily change locations andtransform into a dining table. A meticulously designed wall of built-ins also conceals the ADU’s electrical heating and cooling system. A ladder goes up to the sleeping loft.

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SHLTR PREMIERE ISSUE, 2025 119Vortex-like passageways and wafe-grid sculptures are also preludes to larger works“We had previously conducted studies for a building facade in San Francisco that involved oversized wood tooling,” Ogrydziak explains. This ‘sculpture’ emerged from their experiment to create a texture that deﬁed the typical geo-metric simplicity of modernism. Their goal was to give the wood an enlarged handmade, chiselcut texture. The essen-tial question they posed was: “What are the actual operations involved in crafting wood?” They determined that the CAT-TIA software they used for their comput-er-aided design could replicate the ran-dom, scalloped gouging that one would expect from such a manual motion. “The irregularity of something hand-made is beautiful because it is irreduc-ible to a simple description,” Ogrydziak says. In other words, the randomness of a human hands’s actions can’t be easily explained; you must witness it in action to grasp its complexity and unpredict-ablity. “We became excited about such geometries which develop complexity over time,” he adds. So, veering from typical computer-aided design norms, they took a tool designed for precision and programmed it to deliberately avoid precision. Ogrydziak’s custom formula allows the robot to adapt within a set of speciﬁc actions. Thus, each time it makes an overlapping mark, the process of gouging evolves slightly, and the end result is almost never the same. “design-ing this way expands the range of geo-metric possibility,” Ogrydziak explains. “We developed a unique design “space” for the robot to work in, rather than a single solution.”PHOTOS COURTESY OF OPA

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120 PREMIERE ISSUE, 2025 SHLTRThe Alaska Lounge at SFO, designed by WDA, reects the Bay AreaMATTHEW MILLMANAt the Harvey Milk Terminal at SFO, the Alaska Lounge, completed last summer by William Du Architects, is a place you won’t want to leave quickly. Perhaps it’s because, as architect Jonathan Tsurui—who led the $12 million, 11,000-square-foot design project—explains, “We used some high-end details we typically reserve for residences.” While the palette incor-porates the airline’s signature green, blue, and white, these colors appear in exclusive fabrics and locally sourced wood and tile details that evoke cozy breakfast nooks and comfortable living rooms at home. Meanwhile, lively chevron patterns crafted from wood and Fireclay tile, along with other motifs, subtly reference the wings of ﬂight. “The Aurora pattern is part of their logo,” Tsurui notes, pointing to the inspiration behind the design. The air-port’s unforgiving concrete ﬂoors, which can amplify sound, presented a challenge. But Tsurui, also the designer behind San Francisco’s Kaiyo restaurant, knew just how to address it. Acoustic panels on the walls and ceilings, calibrated to absorb varying sound levels, are used through-out. They discreetly blend into the space, from the quiet “Take a Breath” section for relaxation, to the bustling “Help Yourself” area where food is served, and the lively “Cut Loose” bar. You hardly notice the panels because they’re expertly camou-ﬂaged. For instance, a mural depicting the Golden Gate Bridge through fog is actual-ly sound-absorbing paneling. Though Tsurui has been designing air-port lounges for nearly a decade, the work remains exhilarating. A lounge—no matter how it incorporates standardized features like Alaska’s signature Resolute pendant lights, which resemble airplane turbines—always aims to evoke the essence of its region, something this design does.GOING PLACES BY ZAHID SARDAR