Modern Turn
Author:Lindsey ShookIn renovating this Cow Hollow home, architect Mark English reaches across a century, imagining how architect Elizabeth Austin would’ve updated her designs for today
If Austin could see it now, what would she say? “I think all good architects are concerned with how people live, and I think she would realize this is how people want to live today,” English says. “I also think she would appreciate the care we took to preserve the exterior she created 100 years ago.”
Photographer: Joe Fletcher
“The materials are casual and unpretentious,” English says. “That’s how these people are and that’s how they want to live.”
Photographer: Joe Fletcher
Dark, rough-sawn wood makes up the floors (the architect says it’s grounding and cuts down on glare and reflections); blonde bamboo is used in the cabinetry and for the interior window frames (the windows are new, but the same size and shape as the originals); and metal is used for low benches and a fireplace surround.
Photographer: Joe Fletcher
The materials palette established in this area—glass, metal and wood— runs throughout the rest of the house.
Photographer: Joe Fletcher
“And once the stairs aren’t hemmed in, you can see their form and between the levels. This is our modern version of a grand entry as well as stairs that you might find in a classic house.”
Photographer: Joe Fletcher
Now the double-height room soars over a custom-designed dining table. “It is thrilling to have volume in a house,” says English.
Photographer: Joe Fletcher
“It’s true you do lose square footage by removing the upper floor. But I think we spend too much time talking about the quantity of space we have and not enough about the quality of space we have. In this case, I think that second floor was obscuring the grandeur of the home.”
Photographer: Joe Fletcher
The result is something that looks incredibly bold, the sort of move you see in a remodeled European museum or manor house. “I went to graduate school in Florence, and there you see the old and the new put together all the time,” English says.
Photographer: Joe Fletcher
The house is in a U-shape, and in the bottom part of that U, English topped the roof with a large glass skylight. He removed most of the second floor in this area, leaving only a catwalk and stairs done in metal and acrylic.
Photographer: Joe Fletcher
Completion involved opening up the central part of the house and letting light flood the space.
Photographer: Joe Fletcher
“I look at projects like this and think about what the original architect might have done if he or she had had the technology and the mind-set that we have today,” English says. “If Elizabeth Austin had access to those things, she might well have completed the house similar to the way we did today.”
Photographer: Joe Fletcher
A century later, when Mark English was hired to remodel the house for a couple, he likes to think that he took Austin’s ideas and amplified them.
Photographer: Joe Fletcher
The house was built in 1917 in San Francisco’s Cow Hollow by Elizabeth Austin, a little-known female architect. She was the classmate and contemporary of the more popular Julia Morgan in an age when female architects were a rarity.
Photographer: Joe Fletcher
From the outside, this modestly sized shingle-style house with ornate black trim gives away little about the drama that lies behind the arched doorway. There’s only a band of steel and glass along the ridge of the uppermost gable that speaks to the surprise that lies within.
Photographer: Joe Fletcher