Fougeron Architecture

Sep 2013

This new, 5,000 sq.-ft. downtown Palo Alto house captures Silicon Valley's opposing energies: the precision of technology and the exuberance of nature. Sited on the existing footprint of a 1950s ranch house to accommodate spectacular live oaks, the residence translates California's mid-century architectural vocabulary of indoor/outdoor living into a modernist aesthetic. The transparent living-room volume exposes the front and back gardens to full view from the street and from the interior. Open glass corners connect to the sky and the towering oaks. Private and public are dissolved to give primacy to nature, which defines the residents fluid living space and invites the eye. The open-plan house incorporates the latest in building technologies, including innovative glass products from England and avant-garde structural systems. The exposed structural steel moment frame in the circulation spine and the thin columns and beams express the home?s construction system and its presence in an earthquake zone. Natural light from various sources-floors, ceilings, and walls-combine with translucent, transparent, and reflective materials to create visually dynamic spaces. Throughout, details and surfaces play with notions of formality and informality. The cool touch and reverberating sound of stone and glass in the high-ceilinged living room counter the warmth of wood and fabric in the cozy kitchen and den. All the senses are engaged in this modern dialogue of contrasts.

Palo Alto, CA

Sep 2013

A surprising integration of old and new elements, of competing urban forces, brings the remodeled warehouse alive. Three stories of interlocked spaces have distinct personalities and functions: office, main living area, and penthouse. The rigidity of the original concrete structure is broken down in a subtle interplay of light, surfaces, levels, and indoor and outdoor spaces making the urban living experience as richly textured as the city itself. The second floor is the main living space for the young owners and their children. Its focus: a new courtyard, cut out from the existing floor plate that connects the building to the new penthouse above and to the sky. This vertical section offers multiple layers of transparency and views from one floor to the n ext, thus interweaving the inside and outside spaces with a play of light and dark. All the new elements in the living space-kitchen, bathroom, and storage-are treated as eight-foot-tall cabinetry floating within the existing volume. The airy third-floor penthouse addition is the centerpiece of the design. The geometry of this sculptural object is a deliberate contrast to the orthogonal grid of the existing concrete structure. Reminiscent of rooftop staircase enclosures on old San Francisco warehouses, the penthouse adds natural form to the urban landscape-like a grasshopper settled lightly on the building surface. From all vantage points at the rooftop level, the owners enjoy breathtaking views of the city skyline. The penthouse living area includes the master bedroom and bathroom as one free-flowing space. It wraps around the courtyard, interweaving the upstairs and downstairs levels. Clear glass panes-again a requirement of the owners-offer no visual privacy. Their connection to outer world is a celebration of urban living.

San Francisco, CA

Aug 2013

This new house, infilled on an existing 25-foot wide lot in San Francisco, includes two distinct volumes separated by an interior courtyard. The front structure has a garage at street grade and a painting studio above; the back volume is the main house, with the bedrooms on the lower level, living spaces in the middle, and a master bedroom on the top floor. The design of this project uses two sectional moves: horizontal and vertical. The horizontal move creates two courtyards -- in the middle and at the back of the house -- while the vertical move digs the lower bedrooms down to the garage and street level. The combination of these two moves serves to interlock the house to the site and the surrounding urban fabric, thus interweaving the inside and outside spaces with a play of light and dark. The main floor of the house - an open floor plan with kitchen, dining and living spaces - is punctuated by a two-story space for the stair, and is on grade with the rear yard. A setback of the building on the third floor opens the house to spectacular views of the bay and the Golden Gate Bridge. The house has seven outdoor spaces, all with distinctive qualities and views: the front deck at the studio, the deck on top of the studio, the lower level courtyard, the entry level deck off the courtyard, the back courtyard, the glass and wood walkway, and the backyard. These decks and spaces unfurl around the living areas of the house, thereby unlocking the visual complexity of the structure and its site. This house boldly introduces a new building typology to San Francisco a home of courtyards and light that brings new life to the world of the city's residential architecture.

San Francisco, CA

Aug 2013

Located in the Big Sur area of Northern California, this 2,500 square foot 2 bedroom house was built for a family to enjoy together on the weekends and holidays. It is a modernist structure that sits lightly on the land, acknowledging the ecologically fragile nature of the site. The house is composed of four volumes, all made of different materials, that are interwoven and interconnected to create visually and spatially complex exterior and interior spaces. The main volume of the house runs parallel to the canyon with a butterfly roof and glass corners that reach out to the sky and the light at the open ends. The thin roof sits delicately above a band of extruded glass, connecting to the roof structure with extremely thin rods that are invisible on the exterior. At the corners of the house, two story clear windows frame the views of the redwoods and the sky at the ridge of the canyon. This volume is clad in standing seam copper. On the ground floor, two bedrooms at the opposing ends of the house enclose in the middle the two story communal living space, the fireplace room -- a homage to the architecture of Bernard Maybeck -- and the loft library above. The fifteen-foot high windows in the bedrooms dissolve the corners of the spaces, bringing light and views into the bedroom and living spaces of the house. On the second floor, the space is open with the library and communal sleeping room separated from the two story bedrooms below by glass panels. A combination of transparent glass and extruded channel glass reflects and dapples the light on the inside, creating an ever-changing interior with a warm play of light and shadow throughout the day.

Big Sur, CA

Sep 2013

The remodel of this San Francisco house completely reorganizes the interior space to make the four levels of the house flow together. Like in many San Francisco houses, the circulation is confusing with many instances of disconnected staircases and floors. We reorganized the circulation, opened up the ground floor front to back, adding a main staircase in the back and connecting the four floors of living space with the garden. The ground floor now has a generous entry and a guest room/den. The second floor is opened up, with the kitchen and living room as one space looking down into the den. A faceted custom-built glass wall on the north maximizes views to the garden and downtown. Divided into three verticals panels of glass that push in and out, this dynamic facade is a prism to the outside world.

San Francisco, CA

Jan 2013

This three-bedroom vacation home, on Big Sur's spectacular south coast, is anchored in the natural beauty and power of this California landscape. Our design strategy embeds the building within the land, creating a structure inseparable from its context. The site offers dramatic views: a 250-foot drop to the Pacific Ocean both along the bluff and the western exposure. Yet it demands a form more complex than a giant picture window. The long, thin volume conforms and deforms to the natural contours of the land and the geometries of the bluff, much like the banana slug native to the region?s seaside forests. In this way, the complex structural system applies and defies natural forms to accommodate the siting. The house is cantilevered 12 feet back from the bluff, both to protect the cliff?s delicate ecosystem and to ensure the structure?s integrity and safety. The interior is a shelter, a refuge in contrast with the roughness and immense scale of the ocean and cliff. The main body of the house is composed of two rectangular boxes connected by an all-glass library/ den. A one-story concrete wing perpendicular to the house includes ground-floor bedrooms and a green roof: it is the boulder locking the house to the land. The lower volume, a double-cantilevered master bedroom suite, acts as a promontory above the ocean, offering breath-taking views from its floor-to-ceiling windows. The house has two main facades. On the north, clear expanses of glass reveal ocean and coastline views; long strips of translucent channel glass dapple the light, playing on the sea?s shimmering surface. The south facade is clad in copper, which wraps up the wall and over the roof. These overhangs protect windows and the front door from the harshness of sun and wind.

Big Sur, CA