Design

Lining the hills of San Francisco’s historically Victorian residential neighborhoods, a modern façade is something of a rare sight. In Pacific Heights, a neighborhood high in the hills with a sweeping city skyline below, 2833 Vallejo offers something uniquely different, both to the neighborhood - and to the experience of the home.

The house’s front façade is accentuated by a glass wall that sets it apart from its neighbors. This design often suggests an open interior with never-ending sheets of windows; instead, award-winning Edmonds + Lee Architects opted for a more selective approach to the spaces inside and the views they frame. Circulation weaves you through the home, the windows orchestrated within that circulation to present carefully curated views of the bay.

This curated mode of viewing the city is a notable piece of Edmonds + Lee’s established history of renegotiating the relationship between restorative interior and vibrant exterior. These views are striking not because they encompass the home, nor because they attempt to merge home and bay; instead, they are striking because the architects have broken the experience of the glass wall down into a series of intimate vistas, presented in the sleek, modern interiors as one would present art in a gallery.