Monte Avenue Residence

Piedmont, California

2020

The Bay Area’s brown shingle houses were designed to celebrate relationships with others and with the outdoors. Coined "the original party houses," they often had large spaces for entertaining, sleeping porches, and doors that opened wide to appreciate the garden and the Bay Area’s mild climate. Modified over the years without regard to its original spirit, this home in Piedmont had no large gathering spaces and a completely enclosed back façade with no connection to the yard. The renovation of this 4,000 square-foot home focused on reviving this original spirit of connection, creating fluid spaces for contemporary family life and a renewed relationship with the exterior. A generous new deck and twenty-seven-foot opening create a seamless outdoor extension of the kitchen and dining space. A steel and wood awning provides shade for the late summer hours when the sun is at its strongest. Vertical lines create visual connectivity throughout, visible in the quarter-sawn oak partitions and cedar slat deck railings. The patterns continue in the kitchen, where a sturdy block of stone with etched vertical lines anchors the kitchen, surrounded by navy and white kitchen cabinetry with reliefed paneling.