Project: Cheng Brier House
Architects: Swatt | Miers Architects
Location: Tiburon, California, United States
Area: 6000 ft2
Photography: Marion Brenner, Russell Abraham
Description by Swatt | Miers Architects: This 6,000-square-foot home terraces down a steep sloped lot in Tiburon with dramatic views of the bay. The material palette is an elegant combination of bright white stucco, teak and gray limestone, with the street-facing facade featuring a dramatic teak screen. The living spaces open up to the views, and the large decks and cantilevered terraces allow for ample outdoor living. Water is a prominent feature of this home, beginning with a waterfall at the entry that becomes a narrow water feature running directly through the public living areas and out to the pool facing the bay.
How is the project unique?
The 6,000 square foot Cheng Brier house is located on a dramatic down-sloping hillside in Tiburon, California, with spectacular and unobstructed views of San Francisco, San Francisco Bay and the Golden Gate Bridge to the south.
The home is organized on three levels that step down the steep hillside. The entry and all ‘public’ spaces – kitchen, dining, living and family spaces – are located on the middle level, accessed by dual landscape stairways from the east and west ends of the property. A double height living space adds drama and vertical connectivity to the interior spatial composition. Family bedrooms are located on the upper level, with the master suite featuring a private outdoor Japanese ‘onsen’ open-air bathing area that overlooks San Francisco Bay. A children’s play area is located on the lower level.
Deep, cantilevered terraces are located on the south side of all levels of the home, extending interior spaces to the exterior, and creating outdoor living areas that overlook some of the most beautiful views in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Landscape features include a pool with cantilevered decks at the middle level, connected to an entrance water feature by an interior and exterior narrow water runnel that slices through the home, connecting the two. Below the home, a series of pathways and rock framed terraces lead to a pond at the bottom of the site.
The north, uphill side of the home, has been designed with a strong rhythm of closely spaced teak vertical mullions, providing a sense of screened privacy from the uphill neighbors. In contrast, the south side of the home is clad in floor to ceiling glass, maximizing some of the most iconic view in the San Francisco Bay Area.
The material palette is an elegant combination of bright white stucco, Aegean limestone set in a custom horizontal pattern, stained Western Red Cedar horizontal boards and teak planks, used for the rhythmic screen wall on the north, entran.
