Rhode Island Street Residence

This house addition on a typical San Francisco lot doubles the size of the existing non-descript 1954 "Contractor's Special". Our strategy carves out a series of strongly contained, yet open, outdoor rooms that carefully balance between engaging the site's expansive urban views and maintaining a distinctly private domestic realm. The initial move is to carve a new small internal outdoor courtyard and entry out of one of the existing bedrooms, bringing light into the center of the new scheme. The rear façade and third floor roof decks build on this strategy of carving voids out of a solid mass—perhaps an apt image of the way many urbanites create their private homes within the density of the city. Photography: Matthew Millman