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Twisting the bar: this new house in San Francisco's Bay Area is shaped by the folds of the landscape and sweeping views

Architectural Review, The, Feb, 2007 by Michael Webb

The San Francisco Bay Area is often mocked for its unrestrained hedonism and libertarian politics, but its population is generally resistant to architectural innovation and prefers to wallow in cosy nostalgia. It would be easier to elect a right-wing mayor than to build a radical house in the city or in affluent Marin County, so hats off to Lorcan O'Herlihy and project architect Kevin Tsai for their quiet challenge to the status quo. The Sherman House responds to the topography of its site, and marks a clear break with the traditional repertoire of Mill Valley, a woodsy community just beyond the Golden Gate Bridge.

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The clients were a young couple, about to start a family, who had admired the crisp geometry of the architect's Lexton-MacCarthy House, perched atop a steep slope in LA. Their two-acre site is located on the south side of a ridge overlooking a wooded valley. The house evolved from a linear bar of living spaces and three bedrooms for children and guests that anchors the house to the land and a glass-walled master suite floating above and commanding a panoramic view of the Bay. The bar twists and turns, to accommodate the spiralling motion of folded ground planes, and cantilevers over the precipitous incline, its main floor supported by horizontal steel beams. To the rear, the house stands on steel columns with diagonal bracing embedded in the concrete foundation. The base is clad in wood, the garage and master suite in earth-toned stucco, and an angled wall of Profilit glass links the two levels of the circulation spine.

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This uncompromising design was approved unanimously by the local architectural review board and luckily there were no neighbours to object to the absence of gables and a pitched roof. It unfolds and extends into the landscape in contrast to the tower with slit windows that O'Herlihy built for himself within the dense urban fabric of Venice, California (AR January 2004). However, the horizontal character of this new house is balanced by a vertical thrust that has become one of the architect's signatures, along with his expressive use of simple materials. The interiors are more enclosed than is usual in LA, to protect the owners from fog and winter storms. A solid west wall blocks sun and gale-force winds, and will temper traffic noise if the road should become busier than it is now.

From within, the house is suffused in natural light and feels very open. Steps leading up the slope to the entry generate a diagonal axis across the high-ceilinged living room. The dining room opens onto a walled terrace on the east side. Circulation areas are treated not simply as connective tissue, but as elegantly proportioned rooms. Light from the Profilit wall filters through clerestories into the smaller bedrooms. Expansive windows can be shaded by blinds that move up and down like a kinetic shoji screen, and a long horizontal slit balances the southern exposure of the master bedroom. Everywhere, you feel the presence of nature, the shifts of light through the day and the changing seasons.

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