Out of the ashes: rebuilding the Oakland and Berkeley Hills - California

Sunset, Sept, 1994 by Daniel Gregory

Jennings's first thought was to create a courtyard on the slope. "I started wit the concept of scooping out the middle for a protected open space, and that evolved into scooping out the middle from top to bottom," he says. Becker liked it immediately: "This is great. I love it--the simplicity of it. It's something I never would have thought of myself."

The two-story, U-shaped house opens toward the view to the southwest. Jennings conceived of it as three parallel blocks of space extending toward the view. On contains the main living area over the master bedroom, another contains the garage over additional bedrooms, and the third is simply the space between them At the upper level, a bridge spans this gap to become a floating courtyard facing the view. You enter the house from a glass-backed platform paralleling the street.

On a lower level, the central courtyard opens to a broad, tonguelike stairway extending under the bridge and down to a lower deck. It's a classic California house in the sense that it is organized around outdoor living spaces; indeed, you go outside to get from one wing to the other.

With its rectilinear geometries, expressive horizontality, and sleek industrial and fire-resistant materials--including concrete panels, corrugated aluminum, and galvanized steel beams and railings--the structure soars out over the slope like a sort of hovercraft of habitation. With a monumental deep-set rectangular window drawing the eye toward a distant sweep of bay, the kitchen-dining-living wing seems to accelerate toward the horizon.