Message 2025ONE/ISSUE 2TMTM
© matthew millman photographyDesignfor amodernworld.San Franciscowdarch.com
© matthew millman photographyDesignfor amodernworld.San Franciscowdarch.com
poliform.it
MARMOL RADZINERarchitectureconstructioninteriorslandscape612 York StreetSan Francisco California 94110415 872 5107www.marmol-radziner.cominfo@marmol-radziner.com@marmolradziner
MARMOL RADZINERarchitectureconstructioninteriorslandscape612 York StreetSan Francisco California 94110415 872 5107www.marmol-radziner.cominfo@marmol-radziner.com@marmolradziner
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
aliciacheung.com @aliciacheungdesign 415-670-9822
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
Feldman Architecturefeldmanarchitecture.com
12 APRIL, 2025 SHLTRFEATURES48NATURAL ATTRACTIONPerkins&Will crafted a Russian River retreat.By Anh Minh Le62BEACHSIDE VILLASA Carmel enclave by Luca Pignata.By Zahid Sardar76BRUTALIST BARNYARDLandscape firm Strata tames a floodplain By Reed Wright82FITTING INCary Bernstein remodels a CraftsmanBy Kendra Boutell90PLANE LANGUAGEAt CCA, Jeanne Gang’s school of thought By Zahid SardarCOVERArchitect Nick Polansky investigates wood’s structural potential using water jet technology typically reserved for cutting stone and steel. SAHRA JAJARMIKHAYATCONTENTS APRIL ISSUE 2025JOHN MERKL62
Mouthwatering hand-crafted CBD caramels. Salted to perfection.clovercaramels.com
14 APRIL, 2025 SHLTRDEPARTMENTS16EDITOR’S WELCOMEA series of firsts in our second issue18ADVISORSLeaders who care about design20SPONSORSLasting thanks 23DESIGN SPOTZahid Sardar: Aiming for the future47OBJECTSLisa Boquiren: Some things to covet 94OBSERVERPhotographer Thomas Heinser freezes time and space100MY WORDJennifer Sterling: A designer tells all106MAKERSArchitect Nick Polansky’s artful excavations110ONE GOOD IDEAArchitect Olle Lundberg’s big splashCONTENTS APRIL ISSUE 2025COURTESY FUTUREFORMS2223
16 APRIL, 2025 SHLTREDITOR’S WELCOMEWe’ve been busy. Earlier this month, we celebrated our first issue at the Center for Architecture + Design in San Francisco. Now, with our second issue ready, we’re turning our focus to other fresh starts.To highlight the breadth of design exploration, our current cover features a wood study by architect Nick Polansky that straddles art and architecture. Using water jet technology typically reserved for stone and steel, Polansky investigates wood’s structural potential when cut this way. Unlike inert materials, wood reacts — skipping under the pressure of programmed jets — and Polansky manipulates these aberrations with intention.Another exciting debut: award-winning designer Jennifer Sterling has joined our Advisors Circle. Her essay in this issue charts a distinctive career path that may inspire others just starting out. A former faculty member at California College of the Arts — whose new Studio Gang–designed campus in Potrero Hill (featuring an exposed engineered wood structure) is also profiled — Sterling is known for typographic experimentation. She’s even animated an experimental logo for SHLTR.™Also new: San Francisco lighting firm Pablo has launched Stella, a kinetic, expandable pendant that adapts to both small and large spaces. Futureforms, another local firm known for site-specific art-architecture hybrids, is debuting its first furniture line. Their latest installation, Leviathan, is now on view at the Moscone Center.In our features section, explore work around the Bay by architects Peter Pfau, Luca Pignata, and Cary Bernstein, along with a Brutalist landscape by Strata in Wine Country.Lastly, we’re thrilled to welcome The Wiseman Group and Field Architecture as founding sponsors. Their support and belief in SHLTR™ energize everything we’re building.AUBRIE PICKZAHID SARDAR,EDITOR-IN-CHIEF, SHLTR™EDITOR@SHELTER.PARTNERS@WEARESHELTER
www.studiovara.com
18 APRIL, 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 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. Nish Nadaraja was on the foundingteam of Yelp where heled all marketing, branding and community eorts.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
We Built This By HandAGCSF.COM
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 Oce 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 SPONSORS
HEATHCERAMICS.COM/SHLTR
22 APRIL, 2025 SHLTRDESIGNERS AND MAKERS OF THE WORLD’S F INES T HEATED FURNITURE.™GALANTERANDJONES.CO M BY APPOINTMENT ONLY | 175 BARNE VELD AVENUE VISIT OUR SAN FRANCISC O SHOWROOM
DESIGNERS AND MAKERS OF THE WORLD’S F INES T HEATED FURNITURE.™GALANTERANDJONES.CO M BY APPOINTMENT ONLY | 175 BARNE VELD AVENUE VISIT OUR SAN FRANCISC O SHOWROOMSHLTR APRIL, 2025 23DESIGN SPOT ZAHID SARDAR Past Redux, Future VisionsAbove: Andy Hope’s S.F. Road, a 2025 AI-hal-lucinated landscape, combined with 3D printing, a collage of found images, all on Dibond board. Following Spread: A 2024 collage by Hope that echoes the work of Archigram, the visionary British architecture collective of the 1960s. Near Distance, after Tulare Lake has an AI-hallucinated Tulare lake landscape, and a collage of 20th-century retrofuturist imagery. IMAGES COURTESY OF ANDY HOPEIn Other WorldsA Bay Area artist scours mid-century Sci-Fi writing for inspirationAs a child in a household of physicists and scientists, artist Andy Hope — whose show Yesterday’s Tomorrows is currently on view at the Catharine Clark Gallery in San Francisco — was steeped in the utopian and dystopian visions imagined by pioneering science fiction writers of the 1940s through the 1960s.His grandfather, with whom he lived, was deeply involved in radar research at the Houston Space Center. Yet Hope’s own pursuit of applied physics at Stan-ford eventually gave way to a deeper urge: to reconcile the discordant predic-tions of post-WWII writers and scientists through art. For a time, he channeled that urge into designing buildings and furniture. But the clashing forecasts — of Earth’s inevitable demise by bombs and pollution, or the boundless colonization of space — proved distracting. Instead, he gravitated toward cultivating more hopeful visions of his own.“I have not seen a compelling repre-sentation of space living,” Hope said. “We’re trying to solve problems we’ve created with new technology. Instead, we need to salvage our own unique planet before we go into space and ruin others.”In Hope’s otherworldly landscapes, lost The Engines of Inventionspacecraft and mysterious constructions drift through imagined terrains — struc-tures that echo the conceptual floating cities envisioned by Archigram, the visionary British architecture collective of the 1960s. Across more than a dozen collages and sculptures, Hope fuses past and present visions of the future. He meticulously layers printed sci-fi imagery from the ’60s with contemporary deep-space photographs, integrating stained glass, 3D-printed parts, and background elements generated entirely by AI.cclarkgallery.com
26 APRIL, 2025 SHLTRwww.blasengardens.com
www.blasengardens.comRuth Asawa and FullerFrom Basket Weaving into the Unknown San Francisco artist Ruth Asawa, an American, was confined in a WWII Japanese internment camp before arriving at Black Mountain College, where she encountered both Josef Albers of Bauhaus fame and Buckminster Fuller —seminal mentors who would deeply influence her work. During a field trip to Mexico, she also learned to make looped-wire baskets. What began as baskets evolved into her signature modern sculptures—just as Fuller’s own experimental designs led to the refinement of the geodesic domes for which he became renowned.Now, Asawa’s work has stepped fully into the limelight. With support from Google.org, SFMOMA has mounted one of the most comprehensive exhibitions of her career. Spot the “Martian eyes” and alien floral forms at Ruth Asawa: Retrospective, on view through September 2.SFMOMA.orgDESIGN SPOT COURTESY SFMOMASHLTR APRIL, 2025 27
28 APRIL, 2025 SHLTRGalaxies and CloudsFrom art installations to the future “We’ve been working at the intersec-tion of public art and architecture for a long time,” says Jason Kelly Johnson, who co-founded the aptly-named San Francisco design firm Futureforms in 2009 with his wife, Nataly Gattegno.While they were in grad school at Princeton, Gattegno studied under Eliz-abeth Diller—of High Line fame—who pi-oneered architecture that blends design, performance, and electronic media and the couple began exploring similar ideas.Gattegno now chairs Graduate Archi-tecture Programs at California College of the Arts and Johnson runs its Digital Craft Lab, but their Dogpatch studio is where they develop futuristic public art. Their sculptures often appear in new parks, including Orbital — three inter-twined serpentine forms rising three stories — beside Uber’s Mission Bay head-quarters. Its facted stainless steel “snakes” reflect light and evoke movement.In Washington D.C., Lightwave trans-forms an underpass near Union Station. Its LEDs respond to Amtrak trains over-head, echoing the motion-sensor-trig-gered Bus Fountain by Ned Kahn at Salesforce Park in San Francisco.Another piece, Constellations, at the University of West Florida, features a raised circular structure with ribbons of rippling lights that invite quiet interaction.Now, with their cloud-like Nefos cock-tail table, Futureforms is taking their work home. Debuted at the 2024 ICFF in New York, the sculptural piece adapts fabrica-tion techniques from their canopies and installations. Built from welded rings, it’s a childproof nod to Noguchi’s iconic table—designed with the pair’s own kids in mind. Futureforms.usTop: Weatherscape, a shade canopy in El Paso, Texas by Futureforms that creates micro-climates—for example, through misting trig-gered by changing atmospheric conditions. Above: Their $20,000 Nefos cocktail table is an art piece, “with a stable form,” Johnson says. Opposite: Constellations, at the University of West Florida campus is a striking circular installation that deploys digital technology, lighting, and robotics. DESIGN SPOT COURTESY FUTUREFORMS
SHLTR APRIL, 2025 29
30 APRIL, 2025 SHLTRFolding OutJust like an Umbrella? Not quite. There’s a satisfying symmetry when identical twins design a ‘One-Size-Fits-All’ pendant lamp. That’s precisely what San Francisco-based designer Pablo Pardo embarked on at the tail end of the pandemic—collaborating remote-ly with his twin brother Fernando, an industrial designer in Los Angeles.“Fernando had sketched a scissor-like lamp design,” Pardo recalls. While conceptually clever, it felt visually flat. So, at his eponymous, award-winning studio, Pablo Designs—not far from the Museum of Craft and Design—and over countless Zoom sessions, the brothers began evolving the idea into a more sculptural, circular form. Their goal: a fixture that occupies minimal space, emits a soft ambient glow, and eort-lessly expands to brighten larger areas.Born in Venezuela to a family of artists and engineers, the Pardo brothers were instinctively drawn to the process. What began as rough studies in foam core and MDF matured into precise, functional prototypes using matte-painted alumi-num and flexible plastics.By reworking the pivot points of the lamp’s crossed arms, they arrived at an umbrella-like motion. “That’s when the magic happened,” Pardo says. The final iteration conceals its fasteners and minimizes any visible mechanics—more kinetic sculpture than utilitarian fixture.While Pablo has previously explored drum-shaped pendant forms, this star-shaped piece—named Stella—breaks the mold. Its telescoping design expands from 10 to 60 inches and can even invert to softly illuminate the ceiling. “It’s dy-namic, like a flower in bloom,” Pardo says.Stella pendant, $1,500. Pablodesigns.comDESIGN SPOT COURTESY PABLO DESIGNSaidlin darling design
aidlin darling design
SHLTR APRIL, 2025 33DESIGN SPOT Fracturing Old GroundStudio MC+ breaks from tired decor Cardenio Petrucci, a longtime purveyor of furnishings in San Francisco, has teamed up with Los Angeles-based partner Mattia Biagi to launch MC+ Design Studio—a design consultancy focused on produc-ing limited edition, avant-garde designs. “We are inspired by the Italian designer Vincenzo de Cotiis,” Petrucci notes.Last year, during Milan Design Week, the duo received Interior Design maga-COURTESY MC+ DESIGN STUDIOzine’s Best of Year award for their Impexa kitchen—a striking series of minimalist, freestanding trapezoidal volumes with countertops designed to provide stor-age, and house a pop-up faucet and sink. “There are no right angles,” Petrucci says.Another standout was their Orbis knotted wool rug—made up of several separate segments symbolizing cracked desert earth where new growth emerges after a storm.This year in Milan, Petrucci and Biagi unveiled Fractals—a collection featur-ing metal-and-leather benches with high-gloss, smooth surfaces juxtaposed against richly textural, hand-stitched, and patterned leather upholstery.Interior designer Erin Martin, a fan of their work, features select pieces from MC+ in Martin, her St. Helena gallery and showroom. “We consider ourselves artists who like to experiment,” Petrucci explains. “It is functional art.”Mcplusdesign studio.comClockwise from top left: Petrucci with Biagi in a hat; The award-winning Impexa kitchen; The new Fractals bronzed metal-and leather bench. Opposite: Segments of the Orbis rug by MC+
WWW.LUNDBERGDESIGN.COMMarc ChagallWHERE NATURE ENDS”“GREAT ART PICKS UP
SHLTR APRIL, 2025 35DESIGN SPOTPixellated QuiltsThe Cultural Memory of Patchwork Quilts, composed of textile fragments, are like digital images made up of pix-els—each ‘pixel’ in a quilt often embed-ding the history of its maker.In 2019, the bequest of more than three thousand quilts by Oakland collector Eli Leon to the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive brought a particular history into sharp-er focus: the story of the second great Black migration to California from the South. These quilts—crafted primarily by African American women between the 1940s and 1970s, as a new wave of Black families settled in the Bay Area—reflect traditional quilt-making techniques, a make-do ethos, and the scarcities faced by quilters in transit. But they also reveal a rare, often over-looked artistry that Leon passionately championed in his many writings.He spotlighted the bold, improvisational work of a Richmond quilter who called herself Rosie Lee Tompkins—now recog-nized as a major American artist. Thanks to Leon, BAMPFA holds 500 of her works, several of which will be featured in Routed West: Twentieth Century African Ameri-can Quilts in California, a major exhibition curated by historian Dr. Elaine Yau, on view from June 8 through November 30. In total, the show will present around one hundred works by eighty artists.BAMPFA’s quilt holdings may consti-tute the largest collection of their kind anywhere. Alongside the AIDS Memorial Quilt—another monumental 20th-centu-ry archive housed in San Francisco—the Bay Area may well be the capital of a form of ‘invisible intelligence.’bampfa.org/program/routed-westIMAGES COURTESY BAMPFAAbove: An untitled quilt (Square in a Square), pieced before 1970 by Kitty Gladys Jones and quilted around 1978 by Atleaver Jones, is part of the upcoming Routed West exhibition in June at BAMPFA.Left: A 1987 untitled quilt (One Patch with borders), hand and machine pieced and hand quilted by Florine Taylor; from the Eli Leon Living Trust bequest.
Photo: Matthew MillmanWISEMANGROUP.COMWISEMANGROUP.COMTWG_SHLTR_1pg_2025.03.28.indd 1TWG_SHLTR_1pg_2025.03.28.indd 1 3/28/25 11:09 AM3/28/25 11:09 AM
Art RocksStonemason Edwin Hamilton’s land art Sculptor Edwin Hamilton came to his métier as improbably as he did to his decades-long career as a standout stonemason.A former footballer, he “escaped” Pennsyl-vania by enrolling at UC Davis—briefly. After dropping out, he moved to the Bay Area, found work as a landscaper, and fell in with stonemasons George Gonzalez and Tomas Lipps, who co-built San Francisco’s 1983 Wave Organ.At Lipps’ urging, Hamilton traveled to a small town in southern France, where he learned to build walls from local stone—an ethos he still follows. “There’s something right about that,” he says. “I try to stick with sourc-ing materials close by.”It wasn’t until a trip to Peru 25 years ago that he saw stone dierently: “I came across this Inca wall with 120-ton boulders fitting better than anything I’d ever seen,” he recalls. Inspired, he began sculpting and that led to gallery exhibitions and private commissions.Among them: Twist, a recent 20-foot-long, sinuous piece in a garden near Ross that curves like a modern bench. Made of four conjoined boulders and partially sunken into the earth, it sits in the shadow of Mt. Tamal-pais and nods to both play and permanence.The stone came from the hills visible from his Penngrove home—terrain once quarried by Italian immigrants for cobblestones, when Sonoma County’s quarries powered that in-dustry. Hamilton’s workshop, near Santa Rosa, is tucked into one such still-active quarry.“The stone I used is beautiful. It’s from the place I live,” he says. Lighter than the region’s typical gold and gray basalts, it often has cracks. “Traditional carvers might think it’s awful, but my forms follow the flaws.”Hamiltonstoneworks.com Twist, Hamilton’s 2021 site-specic piece near Ross. DESIGN SPOT IMAGES MARION BRENNER
strata-inc.com
We speak your language.PHOTOGRAPHY: BRUCE DAMONTEmarkenglisharchitects.comMARK ENGLISHARCHITECTS
TAYLOR LOMBARDOARCHITECTStaylorlombardo.com
Design, built.Design, built. Enriching the way you live, starting at home.AT6 Architecture + Design Build415.503.0555 www.AT6DB.com Info@AT6DB.comAT6 Architecture + Design Build415.503.0555www.AT6DB.cominfo@AT6DB.com
BRASILIA CHANDELIER BY MICHEL BOYER FOR OZONEBright on Presidio brightonpresidio.comBright on PresidioBRIGHTONPRESIDIO.COM BRASILIA CHANDELIER BY MICHEL BOYER FOR OZONE
CROWNSF.COMSAN FRANCISCOPENINSULA WINE COUNTRYPENINSULA SAN FRANCISCO WINE COUNTRYCROWNSF.COMBUTLER ARMSDEN ARCHITECTS - PHOTO JASON O’REAR
SHLTR APRIL, 2025 47Callisto pendant lights by Sausalito’s Boyd Studios — in various brass finishes such as antiqued, blackened, satin and satin nickel — include five, nine or even 18 hand-carved alabaster spheres.Details at boydlighting.com The Elytron Lamp byTuell & Reynolds — inspired by beetle wing cases — has a textured base of light, warm or dark bronze, as well as a warm silver finish. At sloanm.com The Solstice console, fromAderyn Studio has an “Ocean Ash” finish and stiking brass accents. Four wood and color congigurations can be further customized. To the trade, at info@aderynstudio.comMonument Side Table from Guild by LMI of solid reclaimed old-growth wood. Through Sloan Miyasato, at Sloanm.comLISA BOQUIREN OBJECTSSolano lounge chairs by Neil Zuleta for Quintus, feature faceted oak (shown) or walnut wood frames, discreet brass sabots or feet, and upholstered seats and oval backrests. About $8,400; prices vary according to finish. For a list of showrooms, log into quintushome.com. Cast, Brazed, HewnTurned and Crafted ALL IMAGES COURTESY OF DESIGNERS
Natural Attraction BY ANH-MINH LE PHOTOS BY MATTHEW MILLMAN
Natural Attraction BY ANH-MINH LE PHOTOS BY MATTHEW MILLMAN
SHLTR APRIL, 2025 51A casual family com-pound by architects Perkins&Will near the Russian River is also a manual for preserving the land. About 15 years ago, Julie and Will Par-ish were looking to make a conservation purchase — of “land that needed love,” as she puts it — within an hour or two of their home in San Francisco. A property in the Russian River Valley, whose real estate listing showed a 25-foot wa-terfall, caught their eye. But, since the Sonoma Land Trust was in talks to buy the 1,000-acre parcel, their agent cau-tioned against falling in love with it. The warning was in vain. Pulling onto the site, Julie was instantly smitten. “We drove around and it just got better and better and better — the variety of the ecosystem,” she recalls. Following some negotiations, the seller ultimately donated 550 acres to Santa Rosa-based nonprofit LandPaths and the Parishes acquired the remain-der. “This is a thousand-acre preserve for which we share stewardship respon-sibility,” Julie explains. Both she and Will are longstanding supporters of public parks and environmental education. There is a conservation easement held by the Land Trust and, although the property is private, the public can access it through LandPaths as a do-cent or volunteer. The organization also oers docent-led outings and camps for kids. According to Will, via LandPaths, about 200 kids from the Santa Rosa school district attended day camp here On the side of the house with an oak grove, the Perkins&Will-designed table and benches were made by Fairweather & Associates from naturally fallen redwood trees from the site.Opposite: The kitchen features a generous is-land with a custom Concreteworks countertop, illuminated by Stickbulb pendants.
SHLTR APRIL, 2025 53Sliding doors that pocket into the walls allow for a seamless transition between the indoors and outdoors; the alfresco kitchen includes regionally sourced Basalite concrete masonry units and a Concreteworks countertop.
SHLTR APRIL, 2025 55last year. “I’d walk or run by and see them scurrying around with butterfly nets and magnifying glasses,” Julie says. “I can’t even tell you how grateful I am to be a part of this.”Meanwhile, the Parishes host work-shops, retreats and community events. Early on, aiming to revitalize the coho salmon population, they honed in on a creek. “We saw the potential for restor-ing it — having the human touch actually improve nature,” Will says. They con-structed a large dirt embankment to hold the creek in its original channel, against the hillside. Excavators dug up the dirt on the spot, creating a large hole that became a pond from rain and runo. “It’s a wonderful wildlife feature and provides recreation value as well,” he adds.After initially erecting a canvas tent overlooking the pond, the couple en-listed architecture and design studio Perkins&Will, Blasen Landscape Archi-tecture, landscape contractor Dexter Estate Landscapes, building contractor Fairweather & Associates and interior designer Sally Ward for a residence on a 3-acre hilltop site that had been “seri-ously degraded,” Julie says. Perkins&Will architects Peter Pfau and Melanie Turner “really understood that we wanted to be as light on the land in every possible way,” she con-tinues. “[The site] was in the corner of the property, so from a visual and experiential standpoint, we had our own Top: The three headboards in the house were created from on-site trees; the Meadow guest room is also outtted with an Akron Street desk and Noguchi lamp.Bottom: In the Oak guest quarters, a euca-lyptus veneer comprises a wall; the bench is a solid slab of eucalyptus. Opposite: The guest wing’s Concreteworks sink is paired with Heath Ceramics tiles and Allied Maker lighting.
Top: A work by Ghanaian artist Serge Attuk-wei Clottey can be found in the narrower of the home’s two breezeways.Bottom: Blasen Landscape Architecture con-ceived the edible garden with redwood planter boxes and a bee fountain to entice pollinators. Opposite: The primary bathroom is appointed in tiles from Fireclay and Oceanside.little discreet hub. The good news was, it had already been destroyed, so we couldn’t make it any worse.” Indeed, by all accounts, the venue was a swampy mess — with potential. “There was some sense that we could create a complex of buildings that could interrelate on the site and reintroduce the natural charac-ter back up onto the hilltop,” Pfau says. Today, ascending the hillside steps, past the garage, the dwelling gradually comes into view, amid an open meadow and oak grove. Pfau likens the struc-ture’s material palette to a tree’s bark and inner layers — “darker outside, with warmer woods inside.” The exterior is clad in FSC-certified redwood with an opaque stain that evokes charred timber. The interior tongue-and-groove walls comprise fir sourced on-site and paint-ed white. The vaulted ceiling is lined in FSC-certified cedar, with exposed cedar Glulam trusses and steel tie rods. “We were very deliberate in every single thing,” Will says. “Whenever we could use wood that was from the prop-erty, we did. … Whenever we had an op-portunity to bring the outside inside, we took it.” Hence, the furniture fabricated with felled trees from the premises and expansive Fleetwood glass doors that slide open and pocket into the walls. Then there are the breezeways flanking the volume that contains the cooking, dining and living areas. One passage provides separation from the primary suite and the other from the guest wing. The latter’s bedrooms are named for their views: meadow and
The living pavilion has retractable walls and bluestone pavers extending outside to theverandas, blurring the boundary between inside and outside. Outside, the Summit X lounge chair is teak. English designed a modernist conversation pit at the center of the living room for informal business gatherings.A meditation labyrinth is located on the edge of the residence, beyond the potager. Opposite: Atop crushed stone, a re pit beckons, with custom benches derived from a single tree that fell less than 30 feet from the spot.
SHLTR APRIL, 2025 61oak. The entire abode is united under a zinc standing seam roof.Along with drought-tolerant and native plants — as well as additional oak trees — the landscape design includes a meditative labyrinth, edible garden with a shed/oce, swimming pool and patio with an Argentine grill. “We didn’t do too much and were trying to be sensitive about the surroundings,” says landscape architect Eric Blasen, who worked in tandem with fellow firm principals Silvina Blasen and Gary Rasmussen. “These are the projects that really make your heart beat because you know you’re doing the right thing and you’re getting the ability to explore dierent strategies.”With net-zero aspirations in mind, a ground-mounted solar array fun-nels electricity into the grid and solar hot-water panels installed on a trellis shade heat the pool. Underground power lines negate overhead wires and poles, plus help reduce fire risks. The home not only reflects its collab-orators’ objective of fostering connec-tions to the land, but is also a testament to their willingness to experiment and even course correct. The exterior was originally painted a color that was deemed too blue in direct sunlight, and the position of the house was open for discussion. “The location was really final-ized when we went out there with stakes and located the corners of the building and the breezeways,” Turner says. “We shifted around this rectangle to make sure the views through the breezeways were meaningful for the clients.” The corridor that holds the ping-pong table was widened — an adjustment that encapsulates another goal of the project. “It was as much about a place for our family as it was a place for Will and me to realize our dream of improv-ing and protecting a piece of land,” Julie says. After partaking in a ping-pong tournament at a friend’s house, the Parishes requested that their breezeway accommodate spectator seating around the table. “What I loved about Peter and Melanie is, they really enjoyed input from us, even though that wrecked the symmetry,” Will says with a smile. “It was more important to have the right house at the right place.” On the hilltop site, amid native shrubs and oak trees, the exterior’s hue resembles bark. Opposite: In the wider breezeway, with naturally fallen trees from the grounds as the wood source, Fairweather & Associates realized Perkins&Will’s bench designs.
Bridges and breezeways link the wings of Luca Pignata’s homes for a family in Carmel PHOTOS BY JOHN MERKL AND ADAM POTTS
BEACHSIDEVILLAS BY ZAHID SARDAR Bridges and breezeways link the wings of Luca Pignata’s homes for a family in Carmel PHOTOS BY JOHN MERKL AND ADAM POTTS
64 APRIL, 2025 SHLTR
SHLTR APRIL, 2025 65Sausalito architect Luca Pignata’s Flo-rentine education—steeped in the shad-ow of Renaissance and Medieval build-ings—resurfaced unexpectedly when he began work on a pair of modernist villas for a family compound in the northern part of Carmel, where the prevailing aes-thetic echoes an English village.It was 2017, and Pignata, then a partner at the Bay Area firm Backen Gillam Archi-tecture—known for a kind of rural mod-ernism popular in Wine Country—was invited to look at an L-shaped beachfront site. It included three lots, each with a cottage. The clients, a Houston couple who’d had a pied-à-terre in town since 2010, wanted to consolidate the proper-ties into a larger coastal retreat for their four children and future grandchildren. Avid golfers, they were drawn to that stretch of coastline, where a sheltered cove melts into the 17-Mile Drive and the manicured links of Pebble Beach.But the hallowed location came with its own constraints—Coastal Commission building restrictions, an 18-foot height cap, and generous setbacks to preserve beach access. The allowances barely per-mitted two stories, much less a pitched roof. Pignata and the clients—developers of towering commercial high-rises, yet first-time custom homeowners—em-barked on a months-long design char-rette to test the bounds of possibility.THIS AND PREVIOUS PAGE BY ADAM POTTSPrevious spread: The Beach House foyer and living room have ocean views. A covered bridge above the central atrium connects both wings. Left: Custom steel and glass doors fold away opening the casual living areas to ocean views. The indoor bar extends the feeling of a lanai. Outdoor terraces with comfortable furniture ranged around re-pits extend the living space. Landscaping is by Joni L. Janecki & Associates.
“We broke the cardinal rule of develop-ment,” the husband said, laughing. “We let Luca do what he wanted.” The one im-movable constraint was height. “We were going to have a flat roof, and that meant a contemporary design.”Eventually, the couple chose to relin-quish one of the beachfront parcels. On the remaining 1.5-acre, roughly rectangular site stretching west to east, they opted to build two separate villas: one for them-selves, the other for visiting family. The ocean-facing residence, dubbed the Beach House, spans the full 100-foot width of the lot. The second, known as the Board-walk, is set down a paved garden path and oriented perpendicular to the main house, straddling a swale near the east entrance. Its rooms all face north, toward the 10th and 11th holes of Pebble Beach.Though distinct, the two homes share a common architectural language. Each is composed of two flat-roofed, rectangular volumes joined by a glass-walled atrium that hints at the views beyond. Public and private spaces unfold on either side of the entry, with primary bedrooms up-stairs. Clad inside and out in sand-colored limestone, the structures feel rooted in the Clockwise from right: the sand-colored foyer of the Beach House has rusticated limestone walls and lowered white oak wood ceilings; An oak and steel staircase goes up a glass stairwell to the upstairs living spaces and the principal bedroom suit and a boulder and river rocks bring the outside in; The second oor landing where a few more stairs lead up to bedrooms, and the glass-walled bridge with Renaissance-style coffered teak ceilings links to the opposite wing and principal suite.
The Beach House principal suite has retractable doors. Armchairs outside surround a re-pit.
SHLTR APRIL, 2025 71dunes they inhabit. The biggest variation: the Boardwalk’s larger kitchen, a nod to the children’s love of cooking.To gain interior height without exceed-ing the limit, Pignata partially submerged the buildings. He used a classic trick: low-er-ceilinged rooms opening into soaring great rooms, creating the illusion of great-er volume—a device often employed by Frank Lloyd Wright, whose nearby Clinton Walker house is a local landmark.“I never thought of it until now,” Pignata reflects, recalling the hill town of Pitigliano in Tuscany, where homes are carved di-rectly into volcanic rock. With this house, Pignata, now the principal of Luca Studio, says he was subconsciously channeling that sensibility.Teak lattices, inspired by Monterey cypresses on the property, soften the geometric rigor of the buildings. These delicate overlays—like the cross-hatching in a pencil sketch—also evoke the extend-ed cornices of Renaissance façades.“We pushed to create more usable out-door space,” the husband says. Setback zones became open-air rooms, outfitted Right top and bottom: The Boardwalk House’s principal suite opens to a deck. Seating around a re-pit and a hot tub, around the bend and under the lattice, have with views of Pebble Beach. Motorized privacy drapes can be drawn along an in-ceiling curtain track in the bedroom as well as the adjacent glass-walled shower. Opposite: The villa’s foyer has steel and glass-paned windows between the public and private wings, with views of Pebble Beach in the distance.
The family eat-in kitchen window doubles as a pass-through for outdoor dining. Views are of Pebble Beach’s 10th and 11th holes.
74 APRIL, 2025 SHLTRwith fireplaces, fire pits, and strategically placed spas—on upper decks with views or in the garden, facing the sea.It’s the best of all worlds, especially in summer. “That’s when it’s so hot in Houston,” the wife says. “Many Tex-ans go to Aspen or Colorado, but we didn’t like the altitude. We love it here. We’ll never complain about cold, foggy weather.” ADAM POTTSAbove: In the foreground, the two wings of the Boardwalk House. The principal suite upstairs and bedrooms below, all have views of Pebble Beach. In the background, the Beach House, visible beyond the replace, faces the Pacic. Right: The Boardwalk House’s dining area opens to a courtyard with a replace. Its chim-ney conceals a TV.
A trough-like swimming pool anchors this minimalist garden by Strata Landscape Architecture
An Elevated Pool Rises Amid the VinesBY REED WRIGHT PHOTOS BY PAUL DYERBRUTALIST BARNYARD
SHLTR APRIL, 2025 79Nearly nine years ago, after Andrew and Kathleen Blank of Park City, Utah, purchased a one-and-a-half-acre vineyard property west of Healdsburg, they learned that it sits on a floodplain. Neighboring creeks and the Russian River periodically spill over during heavy rains, so—on the advice of their former interior designer, Claudia Garcia—they brought in landscape architect Dustin Moore of the San Francisco firm Strata to develop a master plan.Having worked on several wine country gardens, Moore was already familiar with the terrain. The site featured an existing contemporary Craftsman-style home on its southwest corner, but little else be-yond a half-acre vineyard at the northern edge, planted with Côtes du Rhône vari-etals: Grenache, Syrah, and Mourvèdre.With flooding in mind, Moore pro-posed placing an informal “party barn” and a protected, elevated pool—“like a long horse trough”—running west to east between the house and the vineyard.“Andrew had described how they want-ed to entertain friends and family during their time in Wine Country,” Moore re-calls. The couple enjoyed swimming laps, and “he is an avid cyclist. After cycling events, he wanted to meet the others over a glass of wine around a pool.”In Park City, the Blanks couldn’t enjoy the kind of indoor-outdoor lifestyle that California’s climate allows—let alone a vegetable garden close to the main house, which was also on their wish list.In keeping with the agricultural and farm-inspired idiom established by the barn and the 75-foot-long pool, Moore designed a shade structure just south The modernist barn, designed for entertaining guests, has an interior completed by Natasha Wallace and a signature Olson Kundig pivot door with a wheel crank, centered on the raised pool and folly. Opposite: A low garden gate — made of 6-inch wide wood boards to match the barn siding —provides separation from the entry court without blocking the view. The pavers are concrete. Feathery mis-canthis and sisleria grasses soften the Brutalist look that Moore cre-ated, working closely with Gerardo Guardado of Strata Landscape Architecture. Adirondack chairs are ranged around a repit.
of the pool, topped with a corrugated steel shed roof, as well as a fire pit surrounded by armchairs for cooler evenings.Along the way, the Blanks hired the Seat-tle-based firm Olson Kundig to design the entertainment structure, which evolved into a modernist, barn-like silhouette developed by architect Tom Kundig in collaboration with Moore and architects of record, Apol-lo Design Studio. Its six-inch-wide vertical wood siding inspired Moore to use similarly scaled boards to form the concrete walls around the pool, lending the garden—com-pleted just last summer—an unexpected Brutalist edge. A folly resembling an aque-duct arches over the eastern end of the ex-tra-long pool, adding another board-formed concrete counterpoint to the barn. “It pulls the eye across the property,” Moore notes—and conveniently obscures some dilapidated structures on a neighboring parcel.The rest of the garden is softened with hardy sweeps of sesleria and miscanthus grasses, which require only light irrigation and minimal upkeep. Some flowering gaura, grasslike and delicate, was planted between the garden and the vineyard because, as Moore explains, “you want to attract bees for grapes.” Spaced concrete pavers and fragrant ground cover along the walking paths help keep the garden pervious.“It is a very minimalist expression through-out,” Moore says. “Even the plants we chose use less water than most succulents.” Top: The modernist barn by Olson Kundig, seen from Strata’s shade canopy next to the pool. Several swings provide informal lounging.Left: Seating and a fountain near the potager’s raised vegetable beds, near the main house.Opposite: The folly wall spanning across the raised pool is inset with a replace for loungers.
Fitting In
SHLTR APRIL, 2025 83San Francisco architect Cary Bernstein maximized space in a small house for a busy couple, their two boys, and a dogPHOTOS BY CESAR RUBIOBY KENDRA BOUTELLWhen Thomas Goetz and Whitney Wright decided to reconfigure their home’s attic on Potrero Hill, they want-ed a professional who understood the neighborhood. They found Cary Ber-nstein, a Yale-educated architect who remodeled their Potrero cottage, seam-lessly integrating older and modern architectural vocabularies while expand-ing it vertically. She also lived on the hill. “Thomas and Whitney’s project started as a simple attic story renovation intend-ed to create a more usable floor area and a new bedroom,” Bernstein recalls. How-ever, due to the building’s condition, the attic story was ultimately rebuilt with full head height and design improvements. Potrero Hill began as a working-class enclave of Gold Rush immigrants and 1906 earthquake survivors. The lots were small, with spectacular views and a sunny microclimate. In 2002, Goetz, a health-care journalist, and Wright, a social work-er, purchased the artisanal, gable-roofed, Defering to Wright’s favorite color combi-nation, Bernstein selected olive green for the house’s exterior siding, bright tangerine for the front door, and a warm white for the trim. Opposite: Bernstein carved out space in the entry vestibule for a narrow oak bench and coat rack punctuated by steel Byler wall hooks. A mirror expands the street view.
84 APRIL, 2025 SHLTR BY KENDRA BOUTELL bay-windowed Craftsman house built during the early 1900s. The residence had a garden level with two bedrooms and a bathroom, a main floor with public rooms, and an unfinished attic story. During the pandemic, they reevaluated the 2,000-square-foot space they shared with their two sons and rescue dog.“Our boys, now teenagers, are proud to be born and raised in Potrero Hill,” shares Goetz. He is from Minneapolis, and Wright grew up in Mill Valley. They met at Bates College in Maine and lived in New York City before settling in San Francisco. The Craftsman immediately enchanted them: “When I first entered the house, I loved that from the front door, you could see through to the back, and there was a redwood tree; it reminded me of Mill Valley, and the en-try stair had small-paned windows like the house I grew up in” Wright remem-bers. She and her husband wanted to maximize the building’s square footage while correcting haphazard alterations.Goetz and Wright added a sec-ond-floor remodel to the project’s scope, where Bernstein made spatial and aes-thetic improvements. Visitors now enter a soft, warm white vestibule, which segues to a spacious living room where the archi-tect added square footage from a foyer. Bernstein gutted the open plan kitchen, lounge, and dining room, replacing box store cabinets with custom ones fabri-cated from quartered flaky oak veneer. A backsplash of teal-hued Heath tiles framed by Absinthe green glass sur-mounts the restored vintage stove. While the interiors showcase streamlined silhou-ettes and a neutral backdrop, Goetz and Wright favor whimsical pops of bold color.To connect the second floor to the attic, Bernstein designed a sculptural winder staircase with glass guardrails crowned by a large skylight to illumi-nate the center of the home. It replaced Green back-painted glass backsplashes and Heath tiles brighten the kitchen with its refur-bished vintage stove and ‘secret’ dining counter. Opposite: Above the sofa, an Oktoberfest poster from the San Francisco restaurant Suppen-kuche, anchors the kitchen lounge. Hay “Re-volver” bar stools pull up to the ip-up counter.
In the attic, wood and glass partitions between the new guest suite/ofce pocket away neatly.
a steep, unsafe staircase that did not meet the building code. The existing attic was a hodgepodge with uneven ceiling heights, awkward spaces, and a dated bathroom. Bernstein created a new floorplan with increased ceiling height where the stair-well bisects the third floor. She situated the family room west of the stairs with a view of the redwood tree, San Bruno Mountain, San Francisco Bay, and the urban landscape. To the east, Bernstein placed an ensuite guest bedroom and study. “Between the family room and bedroom, a luminous oak and glass wall with glazed tele-scoping doors allows the spaces to be open or closed to each other,” says Bernstein. An indigo Chinese Art Deco rug inherited from Goetz’s family anchors the bedroom where the built-in headboard and desk optimize space; in the bathroom, a walk-in shower centers under a triangular window in the gable, framing the neighbor’s Victorian gable roof. A large skylight, reflective surfaces, tex-tured glaucous wall tiles, and basalt-colored floor tiles make it a retreat for guests.Mid-century, artisanal, and modern furnish-ings fill the Craftsman, accessorized with the couple’s Bay Area art, vintage Heath Ceram-ics, books, vinyl records, and family heir-looms. “Thomas and Whitney are my firm’s ideal clients,“ Bernstein declares. “Urbane, design-minded, unflashy, and nice.” Top: A walk-in shower in the guest bath centers under a triangular window in the gable, framing the neighbor’s Victorian gable roof. The clay wall and oor tiles are Heath.Bottom: A large Velux skylight over the central staircase draws daylight to the second oor where a vintage Rexall Drugs sign glows.Opposite: Closets with angled doors, concealed within white paneling, echo the front gable.
No school could have been more intentional about building design than the California College of the Arts. The planning took years.It faced the formidable challenge of reimagining its century-old, 4-acre Arts and Crafts campus in Oakland. Its aging facilities — dedicated to glass-blowing, ceramics, and metal arts — couldn’t meet the demands of a digital age. Mean-while, its San Francisco architecture and design campus, housed in a repurposed Greyhound bus terminal by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, oered an ecient but disconnected experience.“We were struggling with the student experience,” recalled David Meckel, then Director of Campus Planning. “Students had to shuttle across the Bay Bridge for classes in Oakland, limiting interaction and community.”In 2006, the board resolved to con-solidate. A decade later, they selected Studio Gang, led by MacArthur fellow Jeanne Gang, to design a building that could fully support CCA’s distinctive, Plane LanguageStudio Gang’s new addition for the California College of the Arts is itself a cool teaching toolBY ZAHID SARDAR PHOTOS BY JASON O’REARThe new CCA campus in San Francisco
SHLTR APRIL, 2025 93unique interdisciplinary curriculum.The vision that emerged was bold: the building itself should be a teaching tool. “Our design concept was rooted in creat-ing new connections,” said Steve Wiesen-thal, Campus Environments principal at Studio Gang’s San Francisco oce.The result: a textbook-green, $123-mil-lion, 82,300-square-foot structure with an exposed scaold of engineered mass timber and steel that supports evolving art disciplines in flexible bays.Opened last fall, the building in Po-trero Hill is legible by design. Separated from the adjacent gabled mid-century building by a tree-lined courtyard, its 50,000-square-foot concrete base hous-es a lobby, workshops, maker studios, and a tool library. Above it, a green roof punctuated by two open-air courtyards brings light and air deep into the struc-ture — and doubles as social space.On the northwest corner, a three-sto-ry pavilion holds graduate studios and classrooms. Its mass timber-and-steel frame and seismic bracing define the architecture, while exterior hallways wrapped in balconies oer both shade and climate control. “This pavilion is the tallest so that it could block prevailing winds. This is one of several ultra-passive strategies we used,” Wiesenthal says.A single-story wing on the southwest corner houses the Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, inviting the broader community into the academic realm.Mass timber, with the lowest embodied carbon of any structural material used here, defines the building’s architectural expression. It may also feature the first exposed mass timber lateral system, verified by engineers at Arup.Wiesenthal’s team planned for over 30 design disciplines — and more to come — separating noisy from quiet, dusty from clean, and heavy from light. “We organized them into seven neighbor-hoods depending on their physical and pedagogical aspects. What holds them together are the outdoor spaces where people can gather,” he said.Asked about sustainability, Gang quipped her addition would be “ag-gressively passive.” Meckel laughed. “It wasn’t hard to commit to that strategy.” And Gang delivered. Double Ground: Gang Studio’s multi-story CCA building contains workshops, studios and labs that open onto interior maker courtyards.Opposite: The park-like green roof with mass timber furniture outside the one-story pavilion.
94 APRIL, 2025 SHLTRSpatial Recognition OBSERVER BY ZAHID SARDARIn response to humanity’s impact on the planet and the resulting climate change, San Francisco photographer Thomas Heinser appears to place people, plac-es, and objects on the same conceptual plane—each struggling to exist within a shared moment in time.His recent exhibition at Wessling Con-temporary, Zwischenraum: The Realm of Tension between Humanity and the Envi-ronment, underscores this idea. Zwischen-raum, German for “the space between,” becomes for Heinser a measure of time—the time it takes for a person, a landscape, or an object to blossom, deteriorate, and regenerate, and how each process aects the others. “They are related,” he says.The show includes years’ worth of aerial photographs documenting the devas-tating, yet strangely beautiful eects of droughts and forest fires on California’s terrain, alongside the painterly abstrac-tions of evaporating Bay Area salt ponds. Portraits of young and old subjects, taken over time, suggest a parallel aging process—faces weathered like landscapes. During the pandemic, Heinser began repurposing strips of VHS tape from his old movie library, capturing their tangled magnetic, time-worn surfaces.Once a commercial photographer, Heinser turned his lens on the City about a decade ago while on assignment for Levi’s, discovering a new perspective from a helicopter. “I got hooked on seeing San Francisco from a distance,” he says. “There was Zwischenraum—room be-tween me and the subject.”That distance, both literal and meta-phorical, led him to track recurring sub-jects: fire-scorched forests, drought-hard-ened land, and the quiet erosion of time. “It might all disappear,” Heinser notes. “So I wanted to document it. But I’m not inter-ested in making disaster porn.” Thomas Heinser’s Images Connect Time and SpaceAbove: Cole, 2018. Opposite: Bay Salt 6416.Following Spreads: Central Valley 06881; Julia H, 2013. Renee Wilson, 2016; Videotape 0621.
SHLTR APRIL, 2025 95
96 APRIL, 2025 SHLTR
SHLTR APRIL, 2025 97
98 APRIL, 2025 SHLTR
SHLTR APRIL, 2025 99
MY WORD BY JENNIFER STERLINGWhat Shapes a Designer ?Jennifer Sterling, a Graphic Design Leader in Our Advisors Circle, Shares her Story. Long before I knew what a designer was, I was a kid in my room painting, drawing, and building computers with my brothers. I didn’t know design could be a profession—it was just something I loved to do.After art school, I worked as a de-signer and art director at several firms in Miami: Pinkhaus, Beber Silverstein, McFarland & Drier, and eventually Tinsley Advertising. When I started at Tinsley, they oered me a big oce in the creative wing, but I chose a small room near production instead. I knew I had a lot to learn. Nancy, the producer, was incredibly generous—she taught me everything from press checks to photo markups to commercial shoots. That hands-on education was invaluable, especially since my account was Florida and The Florida Keys.Accolades and awards were never the goal—it was always about learning. One day, I saw a two-week freelance job posted in Adweek for an art director in San Francisco. I sent my portfolio, got the job, and flew out. Afterward, I re-turned to Miami, packed up my life, and moved to San Francisco with my young son. I even refinished the wood floors in our new apartment before job hunting—optimism and priorities of a designer.Thanks to a recommendation from Joel Fuller (of Pinkhaus), I met the always-gracious Michael Vanderbyl, who pointed me toward local studios. I worked briefly at Cronan Design before getting a call from Steve Tolleson, who invited me to join Tolleson design studio as an art director. After a few years, he oered me a partnership—but I decided to open my own studio.When the internet was emerging, many designers dismissed it as “pro-duction work.” I saw it as the future. I believe if you can’t execute a part of the project, the client won’t come back—so I learned everything, start to finish.Since then, I’ve worked on brand-ing and design for clients like Hil-lary Clinton (as one of 45 designers invited to contribute campaign collateral), Vertu, Nvidia, Vital Voices (with Madeleine Albright and Hillary Clinton), Luna Textiles, and restau-rants like Café Monk in San Francisco for LIMN. My projects have included branding, packaging, textiles, annual reports, illustration, photography, and more.Recently, I taught myself coding and animation. Despite attending Pratt, I wasn’t a great classroom student, but I could open almost any program and figure it out. That led to animation exhibits in China, India, and the U.S.I’ve had a three-month solo show at SFMOMA (plus eight group shows), and my work is in the per-manent collections of SFMOMA, the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Cooper Hewitt, and the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe in Hamburg. In 2000, I was inducted into Alliance Graphique Internationale.I call myself a designer—not an art director, creative director, animator, or content creator—because I do it all. Knowledge has always been my goal. I am a designer. Opposite: Sterling’s 2024 “Still I Rise” poster designed for Brian Collin’s Treehaus, a secluded camp/retreat in Massachusetts. Following spreads: A still from a 2022 ani-mation for digital type foundry Fontfabric; Outside In, an abstract waterscape creat-ed in Illustrator, based on a photograph of a bird pond, shot on an iPhone 16 Pro Max, from Sterling’s Florida Gulf Coast home.100 APRIL, 2025 SHLTR
102 APRIL, 2025 SHLTR
Excavations:Architect Nick PolanskyUses Waterjets for Art MAKERS BY ZAHID SARDARPHOTOS BY SAHRA JAJARMIKHAYATA decade ago, during an artist’s resi-dency at Autodesk’s Pier 9 Workshop (soon-to-be-revived) in San Francisco, MIT-educated architect Nick Polansky, 41, began exploring hardwood’s resil-ience when he cut it with a CNC water-jet. The precise cuts he could make with high-pressure jets, “without hollowing out its strength,” fascinated him. He could even pull out chunks of wood in unexpected forms with minimal waste beyond the cut’s slender kerf.Now, Polansky has revisited that interest at NWP, his architecture and art studio in the Mission, with the help of a Sausalito fabricator. His latest work, Hydra, includes curved and linear forms excavated from weathered 3-foot-high ocuts of thick redwood and fir beams. “It’s like cutting through the core of a tree from two directions—horizontal and vertical,” Polansky explains.Some shapes nest back into the orig-inal blocks. Others, shaped like water droplets, can be reassembled or stacked into new forms. Some suggest future products—spoons, vessels, or bench-es—designed from these geometries.The Hydra blocks also show how en-gineered cuts can make wood flexible without breaking. Polansky’s amoe-ba-like holes could one day be used in architecture, joining shaped beams or materials that fit within them.“It’s mathematical and speculative at once. That’s why I call it functional art,” Polansky says. “Wood has an organic presence. It’s fun to excavate that.” Architect Nick Polansky in his NWP studio, alongside a Hydra sculpture. Opposite, cut forms nested in the original block of wood.“Voids are more than that. They are presences”106 APRIL, 2025 SHLTR
Some of Nick Polansky’s Hydra pieces are proof of building concepts he is exploring. On the oor, stacked waterdrop-shaped piec-es form a footstool. Opposite, the same blocks, are a stacked totem. Prices: $500 and up. Nickpolansky.com
110 APRIL, 2025 SHLTRONE GOOD IDEA BY REED WRIGHTPooling ResourcesSometimes, a rekindled idea is simply an-other facet of sustainability. That happened two decades ago when San Francisco archi-tect Olle Lundberg—renowned for creating striking steel, glass, and wood structures for high-profile clients like Oracle founder Larry Ellison—came across an old 14-foot-high wa-ter tank on a former cattle ranch.“I knew it was functional and operational, so I took it, not really knowing what I would do with it,” he said. However, the old-growth redwood tank stirred memories of a 1963 sitcom called Petticoat Junction, where the ‘petticoat’ characters regularly took dips in a similar water tank beside a train junction. “If it worked for them, it should work for me,” Lundberg thought.At his cabin near the Sonoma coast, he reassembled the 14-foot-high tank at the end of a deck that cantilevers above a sloping hillside, positioning the tank so that its top is now level with the deck. The 25-foot circle of water became the perfect plunge pool, placed beside a sauna and hot tub that were added later. The hillside was reinforced with retaining walls, and the tank now sits on new foundations designed to catch any over-flows. A bio-filtered swimming pool this deep would have been prohibitively expensive, but the salvaged tank—and a long-forgotten TV show—made it all possible. Above: The repurposed water tank. Its story is also in the architect’s forthcoming book, Olle Lundberg:An Architecture of Craft, Princeton Architectural Press, with a foreword by artist Andy Goldsworthy. Right: A still from the TV show Petticoat Junction. COURTESY OF LUNDBERG DESIGN
FeldmanArchitectureA 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 BLACKGOTHAM BOLD ITALICGOTHAM MEDIUMGOTHAM MEDIUM ITALICGOTHAM BOOKssu rc i ebbnowSHLTRSHLTRSHLTRSHLTRSHLTRSHLTR