Located in an Oakland, California neighborhood, notable for its rolling hills and eclectic architectural styles, Backfront House property initially intrigued the homeowners for its minimal form and unique split-level siting. Perched several feet higher than its neighboring lots, the fence-lined side and backyard are at the same elevation as the home’s main level, allowing the homeowners—a couple moving into their first home together—to see over the surrounding properties. Due to its unique configuration, the streetside of the house read more like the back of the property, while the side and rear yard areas offered opportunities for active use and overlap between indoor and outdoor spaces. This atypical home design presented both character and challenges as the homeowners wanted to make the home feel more expansive, reflect their different personal styles and routines, as well as accommodate starting a family.

 

With a relatively small footprint, an addition would sacrifice too much valuable rear yard space. Instead, the renovation project focused on comprehensively transforming the property indoors and outdoors incorporating more opportunities for active use without expanding the existing building envelope. Embracing the temperate climate and unparalleled views, the new design extends the living space to an open, fluidly interconnected indoor-outdoor common area. This undertaking nearly doubles the areas for living, dining, and entertaining. At the rear and side yard, a new, low deck surface wraps the house, creating a direct flow of activity out to a series of outdoor seating areas, while also shaping areas of lawn and select plantings in the remaining corner pockets of yard space. The same thinking that went into programming the outside spaces was applied indoors too. Removing the interior partitions that previously separated the living area and kitchen from one another and sectioned off the bedroom areas with an unneeded small corridor, the new layout introduced a new structural beam to support a more open, L-shaped floor plan combining the kitchen, living and entry areas into a single open space that mirrors the exterior layout.

 

The redesigned layout also responded more directly and coherently to the relationship of the interior spaces to the building form and urban siting. Because the entry to the house was located at the side yard and a half level above the street, it is out of view and hard to locate from the relatively closed-off, “backyard” feel of the street side of the property. The redesign of the exterior introduced new lighting, landscaping and other exterior materials to draw people along a clearer path and sequence along the side of the house to reach the entry beyond.

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At the interior, the smaller, more private rooms on the street side were re-configured but maintained as the more private zones of the home, while the spaces at the back of the house were expanded into an open plan for more flexibility and socializing. Re-orienting the main living spaces in this way even amplified some of the existing assets of the property like the pitched roof and corresponding sloped ceiling plane, large corner picture windows and views out to the rear yard and open sky views beyond.

 

The home’s previous interior layout had been divided into many small and odd-shaped spaces, with excess transitional areas taking up precious real estate in the floor plan, leaving the open space remaining in each room ill-suited for furniture or for the activities they were meant to serve. The new architectural modifications redistributed that available square footage back into a larger main living area that could better accommodate the client’s desire for a large open kitchen, entertaining area, family room and some open floor area for their toddler to play.

 

An overall effort of the renovation was to contemporize many aspects of the home, but the design approach also embraced some inherited quirks by redefining them as opportunities for spatial idiosyncrasy and material punctuation. While there was an existingworking fireplace in the living room, it had no hearth or spatial definition and was only articulated as a brick opening in the wall with temporary shelving built around it.  The new design incorporated a new shaped recess to bring dimension to the wall around the fireplace and to anchor a built-in tile hearth and corner bench that also framed the adjacent corner windows. Another inherited challenge of the house was a small L-shaped staircase leading to the main bedroom suite, which sat at a split level up from the rest of the house. The design team reoriented the stair to flow more directly into the circulation of the new layout and defined it more emphatically as a shaped passageway articulated through a floor-to-ceiling wood screen.

 

The renovation also introduced a completely new material palette–inspired by California's diverse microclimates of ocean, mountains, valleys, and deserts–to guide the colors and textures to help define each area distinctly yet cohesively across the whole house. The living room hearth and loveseat are clad in a richly toned handmade terra cotta tile that extends past the front entry, tying together the living and entry areas of the open plan. Behind the living room the kitchen is defined by succulent greencabinet fronts and open shelving that visually anchor it within the opposite corner of the same space. The main bedroom suite leans into the deep blues and cool greys of the oceanside, while the guest room and bathroom take on earthy clay tones. The houseexterior was painted a deep matte black to help minimize its smaller details and accentuate the graphic quality of its pitched roof, letting the house envelope recede visually so that the new textures and elements of the interior and exterior could become foregrounded.