Nominate San Francisco's Brightest Design Talent for Curbed Young Guns and Groundbreakers 2015
Curbed is once again on the hunt for the nation's top up-and-coming designers—as-yet-under-the-radar professionals showing extraordinary promise in challenging the status quo of the architecture and design industry. This year we're doing things a little differently: Instead of one class of Young Guns encompassing all facets of design, we're awarding architects with a separate honor, called Groundbreakers, because, let's be real: It takes a long time to conceptualize and create a building. Setting an age limit excludes too many nascent design practices.
French Artist Unveils Bold New Sculpture at San Francisco Conservatory of Flowers
A new kind of rose is blooming in front of the San Francisco Conservatory of Flowers. According to Hoodline, French artist Jean-Michel Othoniel has planted his gold sculpture "La Rose Des Vents" in front of the structure in Golden Gate Park. In English, the artwork's title means "wind rose" or "compass rose."
SF's Smallest "Apartment" for Rent is Just 132 Square Feet
Earlier today, we showed you the luxe San Francisco apartments that $10,000 per month will rent. Now, we bring you the other end of the rental spectrum.
A $900 studio anywhere within the city's borders has to be a great deal, no matter what the apartment is actually like, right? Not exactly. The 132-square-foot "in-law studio" up for rent in the Outer Sunset right now is without a doubt one of the most depressing apartments we've ever seen. The twelve-foot by eleven-foot room seen here doesn't have anything resembling a kitchen. There is a microwave sitting on top of a set of drawers and a bar fridge. No stovetop, no counter, no place to store anything to eat at all. And the listing makes it clear that whoever rents this place will have no access to the main house's kitchen.
Two Homes Flirt with $2M in Sunnyside
When we wrote about the Sunnyside neighborhood a few months ago, we were looking at homes on the market that ranged from roughly $850,000 to $1,300,000. Clearly, people are catching on that Sunnyside is next door to the ever-more-desirable Glen Park, because the pair homes we are about to tell you about are asking for approximately $1,400,000 and $1,800,000. Both are open this weekend.
What $10,000/Month Rents You in San Francisco
Welcome to Curbed Comparisons, a column that explores what one can rent for a set dollar amount in various San Francisco neighborhoods. Is one man's studio another man's townhouse? Let's find out! Today's price: $10,000.
↑ In Presidio Heights, $9,900/month gets you a lovely 3-bedroom, 2-bathroom flat on flat, tree-lined Clay Street. The building is Edwardian inside and out, and has many architectural highlights like boxed ceilings, built-ins, bay windows, hardwood flooring with inlays, and decorative tiles in the one of the bathrooms. Laundry and parking are included, but there's no mention of the pets policy.
Mapping the 25 Most Expensive Homes for Sale in SF
Rendering via Tishman Speyer/steelblue
It has been some time since we've updated our map of the most expensive homes currently for sale in the city, so it's no surprise that the list has almost completely overturned, although the Lumina penthouse continues to reign supreme at $49 million. There are currently nine homes up for sale in the eight-figure range, and, of course, Pacific Heights is the most popular neighborhood for very expensive homes. What is surprising is how many of these homes have taken price cuts in their time on the market. Nine of the houses have dropped their price at some point.
An Example of Why Everyone Wants to Move to Bernal Heights
The good weather, great commuting location, and plethora of delightful little cafes and restaurants has made Bernal Heights one of the city's hottest neighborhoods. It's also led to some bidding wars on both humble housing stock and fancy flips. The home at 3215 Harrison St. isn't completely in the modest category, nor is it one of larger modernist dwellings springing up all over the hill. You could best describe this house as exceedingly pleasant.
Frank Lloyd Wright, One Tough Architecture Critic
Australian architect John Andrews's proposed design for Toronto's City Hall, one of eight finalists selected for a design competition held in 1958. Frank Lloyd Wright said it "falls into the utterly fantastic and inutile."
Frank Lloyd Wright was a man of strong opinions and stronger words. And he often saved some of his strongest for when he was discussing or debating architecture and his fellow architects. Take the 1958 competition to design the Toronto City Hall, which eventually led to the selection of Finnish modernist Viljo Revell's striking plan(evidently, in a case of architectural deja vu, Revell's design was passed on by the judges, only to be rescued from the reject pile by Eero Saarinen, the exact same thing that happend to Jorn Utzon's design for the Sydney Opera House). The Toronto Star recently published archival photos of the submissions from the seven finalists who didn't make the cut, and included feedback from Frank Lloyd Wright, which the paper published in 1958, and the paper's current architecture critic, Christopher Hume. Wright doesn't mince words; his responses vary from questioning ("Why jack the box up so high? What's he afraid of — a flood?") to unflattering comparisons ("a radiator front jacked up for some peculiar reason on top of a building"), quickly and succinctly getting to the point.
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Bring the Tudor Indoors at This $6.995M Broadway Home
The last time the five-bedroom Tudor home at 2470 Broadway in Pacific Heights sold, the year was 1976 and the price was just $176,000. Times have, of course, changed, and the home just came back onto the market looking for $6.995 million. It's certainly not the fanciest home on Broadway, but it does have some very unique spaces. The most notable of these is a two-story glass solarium that looks out from its Broadway perch to the Bay. Glass doors open up from the terrarium onto a back terrace with the same striking views.
Plans for Transbay's Block 5 have been in the works for a while now, with the development team—a joint venture between Golub Real Estate Corp. and The John Buck Company—proposing a 43-story office tower for the site. Now, the $173 million sale of the site has officially gone through and an October 6 groundbreaking ceremony has been set. Funds from the sale will head into the coffers to build the Transbay Transit Center, to which the new office tower will sit adjacent. [Previously; Curbed Inbox]
Designing Minds: New Stores, Cover Scores, and a lot of Plaid
House Beautiful features Benjamin Dhong's Wine Country retreat in the October issue. Photo via House Beautiful.
With game-changing technology companies, burgeoning real estate prices, and a fast-changing landscape, San Francisco has been in the dead center of the cultural crosshairs for years. It seems like the city's top designers are also in the national and international spotlight more than ever before. Case in point: The October issue of House Beautiful. With local designers as the subject of three out of a total of five features, the publication could have renamed itself House Bay Area for the month. Interior designer Benjamin Dhong has the cover with his personal Wine Country home, and it's a beauty.
Plans Filed for New Housing at Shuttered Van Ness McDonalds
The McDonalds on Van Ness Avenue has been sitting abandoned and boarded up since January, surrounded by a chain-link fence. Given the surge of new development along Van Ness that is turning it from a drive-through wasteland into a redevelopment hotspot, there was no way that the site would stay vacant long. Plans were filed late last week for a nine-story residential building that would hold 150 units, many of which would be studios. There would also be one- and two-bedrooms, and a set of two-story townhouses along Elm Street. The design features two towers that would be connected by air bridges.
10 Tropical Dream Homes Hailing From Southeast Asia
Photo by Ketsiree Wongwan via ArchDaily
Recent residential architecture completed across Southeast Asia just goes to show the beauty of taking advantage of what you have. Dealing with a tropical climate, that is to say hot and humid with lots of rainfall, the region unsurprisingly loves very indoor/outdoor abodes, emphasizing great natural light and ventilation. Specifically, this might mean incorporating perforated brick walls or bamboo roofs, not to mention a healthy dose of more traditional sun-showered courtyards. It all makes for some rather intriguing residences.
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- EditorMary Jo Bowling
- Associate EditorTracy Elsen
- Features EditorSara Polsky
- PhotographerPatricia Chang
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