I’m working towards my final decision decisions regarding the (hypothetical) redesign of Ella’s, a neo-classical American cuisine restaurant in Laurel Heights/Presidio/Fillmore District of San Francisco.
An exterior sketch:
Most likely it’ll look a little something like this with a bit of color added:
And some quick thumbnail color studies of the interior. Which combinations do you prefer?
Here are a few new loose sketches, for the sake of practice! These are all based on photos I’ve taken or on perspectives outside of my house.
From a photo in Javéa, Spain.
From a photo in Lyle, Washington.
From a photo in Javéa, Spain.
A view from my dining room to the back yard.
A photo from a mountaintop near Javéa, Spain. These were granaries several hundred years old in age. A few had been turned into modernized residences inside. The view down to the coastal city, and the encircling mountains around was astounding! And those are, of course, giant aloe vera plants in the foreground.
A few days ago, I submitted my final drawings for “Inland”.
“Inland” refers to the bay-area setting, and the conceptual and pragmatic choice to inlay the house into the land itself.
A reminder of the design intentions:
“Inland.”
This guest house addition to a bay-front home in Tiburon, California near San Francisco is the epitome of rustic sophistication. Intersecting quadrants and a multi-layered, inset hill-side approach make this space feel larger than it is, providing the family with an accommodating, multi-purpose, stand-alone addition to serve out-of-town visitors, pool party guests, and daily family recreation.
Natural, hardy materials will pull the view of the bay’s surrounding mountains into the space. Impressions of local flora and fauna will contribute to the natural, rustic, but lush feel of this bay-front addition by way of a leopard-shark inspired pool-floor mosaic, foliage-adorned upholstery, a fern-inspired bathroom mural/wallpaper, and other accents. Large, responsive windows and spacious decks will provide optimal views from both inside and out. Additional skylights and a westward facing orientation will optimize light for a comfortable, and beautiful interior environment.
And, a living roof which hosts native plant and animal life serves functional and aesthetic purposes. Flooding, accumulated solar radiation and some loss of habitat are all avoided through the preservation of the hillside on the guest house roof. Aesthetically, the living roof will cause the mostly-sunken guest house to blend further into the surrounding site so as to preserve an undistracted view from the main house.
There are always things to fix and improve upon the next time. But, standing where I stand, I feel pretty proud of the result: this project is my first full exterior-interior design with a full set of presentation drawings.
If you were to print out this floor plan and the one below, layering them on top of one another precisely, you would see how the top floor and second floor intersect and their floors/ceilings. The dashed line in front of the kitchen area, seen in the floor plan below, is an indicator of where the deck above would be situated in relation to it.
You can a section indicator (top right) in the “First-Floor Plan”, which corresponds to the drawing below. A “section” is a cross-section of a floor plan but in an elevation view-point, which means, essentially, head-on with walls and floors visible.
In this case, the cross-section travels across the longest length of the top story, depicting the children’s corner, the living room, then hallway/atrium with main entrance, built-in book case, and then bathroom.
A technical section would show even more detail than this, like floor joists and whatever composes the ceiling and walls.
Here are several small interior elevations including the kitchen/wet-bar, children’s area and guest bedroom, all requirements of the project program ( the word “program” in interior architecture/design is used to describe the set of “problems” that require creative solutions).
See more after the jump…
