San Francisco, CA
Set atop San Francisco’s Telegraph Hill, this seven-unit apartment building was originally designed in 1951 by the Bay Area firm of Hertzka and Knowles. With spectacular panoramic views of the Bay Estuary, Bay Bridge and Downtown, the project scope included a full renovation and seismic retrofit of this mid-century gem with the goal to reallocate the units’ square footages in order to create a new three-bedroom “owners” townhouse.
The horizon is the primal DATUM of all dwelling. It is the reification of the elemental link between the internal mechanism of perception and external realm of physical reality. It is what links us intimately to our surroundings. Throughout history, surroundings change, technologies change, languages change, cultural and expressive imperatives change, but what architecture must respond to now is the changing nature of the primal conditions of the medium itself; that of perceptual and psychic references.