Restyling a City Home into a Ceramicist’s Live-Work Art Space

The transformation of this 1915 home integrates functional art production into the residence of a San Francisco ceramicist. The historical kitchen has become a capacious modern workspace for culinary pursuits and dry media artwork. Warm balsa wood panels, recycled from end-grain paneling in the artist’s former New York Studio, add character while enabling pinup space for artwork.

Large glass patio doors open out to the garden, housing a new glass and black aluminum ceramic studio. Inspired by the Maison de Verre in Paris, we employed varying opacities of glazing, within the matrix of metal, to experiment with diffuse and direct light and to modulate privacy. A primitive form set in the landscape, with views and operable openings to the garden, the luminous studio provides abundant space for the work of the artist. Looking back to the house, Shou Sugi Ban, or charred Japanese cedar, responds to the aesthetics of the contemporary studio.