Envelope worked closely with the exceptional interior design team at the Office of Charles de Lisle to craft a comfortable personal sanctuary out of a five-story spec house built up into the hillside. Both a fun family home and a sophisticated site for memorable events, the architecture and interiors compose a progression of settings from the intimate and to the expansive, engaging views afforded by the home’s ridge-top setting.

Our work focused on enhancing the vertical promenade through the house, defining discrete spaces one moves through from street level to roof deck. As one ascends, private settings – a guest suite and kids' mudroom – give way to an open floor where kitchen, dining and living areas extend from rear garden to front deck. Rising further, the home turns again towards the intimate, with family bedrooms, a home office and a top-floor family gathering space. Storage is hidden on each floor, maximizing the continuity of form while also creating unique moments as one accends.

The main living level offers a warm embrace. Pink-hued vertical grain Larch wall-paneling wraps the stair volume and vanity then flows into the kitchen cabinetry. Lattice-grid doors, painted green, hide an office perch, pantry and cocktail bar, then extends outward to become a planted lattice wall, phenomenally joining the private garden with kitchen-dining area.

A sculptural stair painted in an ombre of soft pinks and culminating in a large open skylight heightens the sense of transition from the social to more private levels of the house. A site-specific work by San Francisco artist Jenny Sharaf animates the void of the stair helix, introducing a burst of unexpected color and playfulness as one climbs to the vertiginous roof deck above.