Project: Lisle Residence – Urban Remedy Project
Architecture: Zinni Architecture
Location: San Francisco, California, United States
Area: 1400 ft2
Year: 2021
Photo Credits: Garry Belinsky
Lisle Residence – Urban Remedy Project has a particularly constrained existing context. The single-family residence is a part of a long integrated history of outdated and sweepingly applied developer vernacular homes.
The house was built in the 1960s along with 2000 other intended homes by the Meyer Brothers in the Miraloma park development of San Francisco. Using only a few prototypical basic plans the Meyer Brother’s built almost 600 one-story-over-garage homes, comprising one of the largest developer communities in San Francisco’s history.
This remodel for a young family in San Francisco questioned the developer vernacular and its ability to respond to the individuality of its owners as well as the environment. The remodel was tested with not only meeting the client’s needs for modern living within a limited budget but also its ability to respond to the latest reality of a COVID-19 world. Due to the extended need to quarantine, office space was carved out of the mid-level area to accommodate work-from-home needs.
The ‘green belt’ that wraps around the back of most Miraloma Park homes was initially left as a wild hillside by the developers and often filled with not native trees causing soil disturbance on the steep-sloped “backyards”.
The project reclaimed the back hillside area through a network of occupiable terraces and a reintroduction of native plants. The interior rooms of the home were reworked to accommodate more open living with a closer connection to the different living areas and the outdoors.
Lifting and articulating ceilings along with more introduction of light through windows and skylights, further enhanced feelings of expansion within the small 1,400sf home. The outdated interior was modernized to match the client’s minimal and design-oriented tastes.
The result of these improvements re-introduced the home to its neighborhood and removed it from its previously isolated introverted nature. Greenspace was maximized to create an opportunity for outdoor living as well as rehabilitate the eroding soils. By both carving out new spaces and enhancing the interior, a more responsive home emerged.
One that meets the client’s individual family needs and also provides a stabilizing space for them to inhabit throughout a pandemic and beyond.
