Welcome to the Micro-Hood

San Francisco, CA
Considering the possible future abundance of office spaces San Francisco will inherit and the cultural shift towards “work from home,” the City’s downtown’s commercial district will need to be re-envisioned for the post-pandemic society. It doesn’t make sense to tear down and rebuild with the investment we’ve already made, i.e. embedded energy embodied within building materials and labor of construction. We can take this opportunity to rethink retrofitting the building stock we have, repurpose it, optimize its use and decarbonize the future.

Gene Friend Recreation Center

The Gene Friend Recreation Center in Joint Venture with Mark Cavagnero Associates Architects, currently In Design.

Bay School Building 36

The Bay School of San Francisco is an independent high school which has operated out two buildings in the historic …

Consequential Disruptions in Transportation Infrastructure

Having moved to San Francisco from Boston months prior to the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, I experienced firsthand the sudden destruction of much of the city’s infrastructure, including the irreparable damage to the elevated 50-foot-high two-level Embarcadero Freeway and the disruptions to transit access. This controversial piece of infrastructural highway, which was envisioned to create an expedited vehicular connection from the city’s Bay Bridge to the Golden Gate Bridge, bypassing the city grid, was at that point realized but only in part.

Newsletter #11

Last month, we were excited to host our annual office retreat at the Randall Museum, a project we did a few years back with our good friends at Pfau Long Architecture (now Perkins&Will). The retreat was a great success: we began to craft a mission statement, reviewed personal and team goals, and—above all—enjoyed reconnecting with one another. We are now back at the office with a hybrid work model and are relishing collaborating informally and working with each other in person again.

How to Carve Out a Townhouse in a Four-Story Midcentury Modernist Apartment Building

Recently, we reconfigured several units in a four-story midcentury gem of an apartment building atop San Francisco’s Telegraph Hill, an exercise that was not unlike solving a 3D puzzle. We kept the panoramic views of the Bay and city skyline while rightsizing some of the units and carving out a two-story townhouse for the owners. The project shows the adaptability of the original building’s strong modernist bones and the opportunities for adding curves to counterpoint the orthogonal nature of the modernist box.

Telegraph Hill Apartments

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.

Micro-hood

San Francisco, CA
Considering the possible future abundance of office spaces San Francisco will inherit and the cultural shift towards “work from home,” the City’s downtown’s commercial district will need to be re-envisioned for the post-pandemic society. It doesn’t make sense to tear down and rebuild with the investment we’ve already made, i.e. embedded energy embodied within building materials and labor of construction. We can take this opportunity to rethink retrofitting the building stock we have, repurpose it, optimize its use and decarbonize the future.

JCDecaux SF Public Restrooms and Kiosks

San Francisco, CA
The confluence of San Francisco’s urban character, natural beauty and vibrant colors offers a unique context for the redesign of the City’s Public Restrooms and Advertising Kiosks. These next generation of people-centric amenities can both create a dialog with their urban and natural setting as well as become welcoming beacons for residents and visitors. Embracing a color pallet that reflects the lifecycle of California wild flowers, these proposed restroom and kiosk enclosures blend their respective programmatic functions with a vibrant graphic pattern to distinguish and signify their much-desired role within their immediate surroundings. 

San Francisco International Airport-The Big Idea Behind the Big Room at Terminal 1

A Conversation with Michael McGroarty, Ophelia Wilkins, and Ethen Wood
Q: Before we get into talking about the Big Room and what it is, let’s talk about the project it was built for.

Harvey Milk Plaza – Finalist

San Francisco, CA
Harvey Milk Plaza will serve as a welcoming door to the city’s historic Castro District and a destination to learn about the life (and times) of Harvey Milk. We envision the Plaza as an unified and integrated experiential memorial to inspire generations to come.
In collaboration with RHAA Landscape Architect and Catherine Wagner Studio

Speaking in Tubes

For three days in early October, the 2016 Market Street Prototyping Festival gave the public a chance to experience more than three dozen ideas for enhancing San Francisco’s main drag and creatively engaging people with the urban environment and with each other. Created by teams who answered a call for submissions last April, the installations ranged from an artistic ping-pong table to an enclosure containing homemade musical instruments to a hand-crank-powered box that distributed stories and artwork. Kuth Ranieri’s contribution, SonoGROTTO, was a pavilion made of hundreds of cardboard tubes, carved to create seats, windows, and an oculus that frames views to the sky.

San Francisco International Airport – Terminal 1C

San Francisco, CA
Kuth Ranieri teamed with Gensler on the design for the 1.1 million square-foot SFO Terminal 1 Center Renovation Project. Through design-build delivery with Hensel Phelps, the new terminal redeveloped one of the Airport’s oldest terminals to meet the needs of modern travelers and revolutionize the guest experience.

A Gensler / Kuth Ranieri Architects Joint Venture

SonoGROTTO

San Francisco, CA
A proposal for the 2016 Market Street Prototyping Festival, SonoGROTTO creates a space of respite and repose on the busy sidewalk. Catering to a diverse range of ages, users and situations, SonoGROTTO hopes to provide space for reflection, refuge and a myriad of alternate uses which visitors bring to the piece.

Randall Museum

San Francisco, CA
Through coordination of architectural design, interpretive graphics, and live animal exhibits, we have organized various disciplines for the creation of a place of comprehensive scientific and artistic exploration.

In Joint Venture with Pfau Long Architecture

Balboa Pool Renovation

San Francisco, CA
The proposed design for Balboa Park Pool renovates the existing natatorium facilities in an economic way, leaving essential elements in place while enhancing the user experience and upgrading the structural and environmental systems to meet sustainable standards of performance.

In Joint Venture with ELS Architecture

San Francisco International Airport – Employee Cafe

San Francisco, CA
One of a number of “Enabling Projects” as part of the T1C Renovation, the project renovated a former Chinese restaurant, bordered on one side by an existing TSA security barrier. The design creates a “Pop Up” feeling to reflect the two year life span.
In Joint Venture with Gensler

Mission Bay: A Proposal for a Green District Identity

San Francisco, CA
The proposal for this green district includes a pedestrian street bridge, skateboard park, aviary, eco-magnet high school, and CCA’s student and media center.

Vertical Wetlands

San Francisco, CA
Vertical Wetlands is a proposal that addresses San Francisco’s immediate water-related challenges.

AIDS Memorial Grove

San Francisco, CA
Our design strategy proposes to define and link the intimacy of the National Aids Memorial Grove to the encompassing daily urbanism of its surrounding city and culture.

In collaboration with Rodolphe el-Khoury (ReK Productions)

Harvey Milk Memorial Car

San Francisco, CA
This memorial streetcar is meant to connect the Castro District with downtown San Francisco. In this regard, the memorial, like Harvey Milk’s impact, is not confined to a particular district but transcends across boundaries within the city.

Champions of the Bay Area Heroic

I grew up in San Francisco in a building designed by Julia Morgan, one of the earliest and most influential architects of the Bay Region style. (The building happened to be the San Francisco Zen Center.) So it may seem surprising that two of my biggest architectural heroes are Mario Ciampi and Paffard Keatinge-Clay, designers of concrete buildings in the style commonly labeled “Brutalist.”

GLBT History Museum

San Francisco, CA
In the Castro District, The GLBT History Museum is the first stand-alone museum of its kind in the United States and serves as a center for the Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual Transgender Historical Society to interpret the history of the GLBT communities.

In collaboration with Steve Const

CAMP: A Gateway Proposal Presidio Museum

San Francisco, CA
The CAMP Museum resolves the monumental spatial corridor by framing the north/south axis with flanking galleries and extending a contiguous greenway.

SFMOMA Fabrications

San Francisco, CA
This installation at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art revolved around themes of body, material, and fabrication.

Curated by Aaron Betsky

Guest House / Gallery

San Francisco, CA
The project is designed with the consideration of the building’s perimeter walls as display surfaces for art and utilizes industrial felt to enrich the domestic functions of this residence.

Wurster Residence Renovation

San Francisco, CA
The patterns and demands of contemporary life dictated the reconfiguration of key areas of the house. Architectural interventions accommodated the needs of the owners while maintaining the identity and experience of Wurster’s remarkable design.

Nob Hill Residence

San Francisco, CA
The house is sited on a narrow alley that transforms from street to garden at the building’s front door. The project falls between the grid of the city and the organic nature of a garden landscape.

Russian Hill Penthouse

San Francisco, CA
Our intention was to create an interior realm that establishes a seamless continuity with distant views of the landscape, creating a project that was to internalize the color, material and texture of the surrounding vistas of bay, mountain, city, and sky.

Park Presidio Residence

San Francisco, CA
Consisting of 6,500 sf of living space spread over four levels, this private residence was designed for a family of six. Sustainability and energy independence were integral to the conception and realization of this project.

Russian Hill Co-op

San Francisco, CA
This interior renovation of a 4,500 sf full floor unit provides modern living for a client with an extensive contemporary art collection as well as a home office. Situated in Russian Hill, the home commands a 360º view of San Francisco.

Russian Hill Apartment

San Francisco, CA
Subtle drifts in plan and section extend the movement from the interior to the distant landscape.