Inner visions: architecture and interior design, living together in harmony - design firm Brayton + Hughes Design Studio's solution

Residential Architect, April, 2003 by Meghan Drueding

disappearing act

No one ever said designing a live/work project was easy. Balancing the dual nature of the space gets tricky: Tip it too much in either direction and you disappoint your client in a fundamental way.

Brayton Hughes Design Studio, an interior architecture and design firm in San Francisco, devised an ingenious solution for a live/work loft at the foot of the city's Bay Bridge. The client, who lives full-time in Palo Alto, Calif., asked for a space where he could concentrate on paperwork and hold informal meetings. He also wanted the loft to serve as a weekend pied-a-terre for himself and his wife. Rather than compromise either mandate, principal Richard Brayton, FAIA, created a working environment the owner can transform into a living zone at a moment's notice. "We planned it so that all the working features can disappear," he explains.

For example, the maple cabinetry lining the length of the living room stores two built-in desks. The desks slide out to provide extra work surfaces; when put away, they blend chameleonlike into the rest of the woodwork. Other innocuous-looking cabinets along the wall are actually hardworking file drawers.

But this still wasn't enough storage for the client. So Brayton added eggcrate bookshelves, supported by a structural steel frame, along the upper portion of the wall. Each crate holds a numbered aluminum file box, designed by Brayton Hughes. "The owner had a lot of files," Brayton says. "We had to either make a closed-off storage space, which would take up a lot of room, or else figure out an alternative." To reach the boxes, the owner uses a sliding, steel-and-maple library ladder, also a creation of the architects.

In fact, nearly every piece of hardware in this ultra-custom loft is a Brayton Hughes original. "The builder, Ryan Construction, has highly skilled craftsmen who could pull off all the custom metalwork," Brayton says. That metalwork includes the mechanisms behind the project's most dramatic feature, a convertible kitchen. Hidden behind an undulating maple wall, the kitchen is revealed when the 7-by-15-foot wall swings open along a metal floor track. The room's sink, dishwasher, cooktop, and refrigerator mean the clients don't have to subsist on takeout meals. And the owners' ability to close it up quickly facilitates the transformation from residence to office.

The loft's building was once a warehouse, and the apartment has a view of the Bay Bridge's underside. Brayton chose finishes that respond to this industrial setting. Galvanized steel fronts the kitchen cabinets and appliances, and the kitchen counters are poured concrete. White-painted wood frames and working shutters surround the windows, complementing the existing exposed brick walls far better than curtains would have. Task lighting under the bookshelves brightens the client's paperwork, while track lighting along the original wooden ceiling beams illuminates the main living space. Brayton Hughes added two new beams to hold additional track lights.

Since the bridge blocks much of the sunlight shining in the loft's direction, Brayton had to devise ways to warm the space from the inside. The yellow pine floor and maple woodwork help, as do the yellow sofa, the cream-colored rug, and the maple desks and chairs. All of the furniture moves easily to accommodate different social or professional setups. "The client had to be able to reconfigure the furniture for meetings, so it's all either on wheels or doesn't weigh much," Brayton says. And the enormous French advertising poster on the north wall--appropriate art for both a workplace and a residence--tames the scale of the 20-foot-high ceilings.

project: Live/work loft, San Francisco

architect/interior designer: Brayton Hughes Design Studio, San Francisco

general contractor: Ryan Construction, San Francisco

project size: 1,500 square feet

construction cost: Withheld

ordering in

In the five years since Mark Hutker, AIA, added an interior design division to his firm, he's noticed a difference in the way he and his staff work. "We're much better architects for understanding the implications of interiors," he says. "We've learned a lot about how furniture looks in a room." Whether or not the client has engaged his firm as the interior designer, Hutker still follows one basic precept: Include interiors as part of the project from the very beginning, rather than thinking about them midway through construction.

A Martha's Vineyard, Mass., addition/remodel his firm designed inside and out illustrates his principle. Staff interior designer Susan Bielski says the owner asked for a peaceful, calming atmosphere. So she embarked on the ambitious task of finding materials and products that could be used throughout the house to establish a sense of continuity. Every light fixture in the house, for example, from the bedside lamps to the living room sconces, is an Artemide Tolomeo model. Bielski specified the same eggshell shade of paint for all the walls and trim. And the upholstered aluminum guest-bedroom headboards are woven in the same pattern as the master bedroom's cedar-and-ash headboard.