For the playfully-named Funky Drummer, a new single-family residence tucked into the hillside of San Rafael, with sweeping valley views, San Francisco-based architecture practice Mason Kirby was tasked with the challenge of maximizing square footage on a steep riparian site with natural gullies and critical height and massing requirements.
“The goal was not just to build in a hill, but to become part of the hill itself,” architect Mason Kirby explains. “We selected materials and finishes that seamlessly blend with the environment, in contrast to the Spanish Colonial-style homes nearby. This harmony with the natural landscape is reinforced by the massive foundations, a geotechnical solution, which makes the building feel as if it’s always been a part of this hill.”
From an architectural pattern-making perspective, Kirby had a broader opportunity to develop a rhythm and a sequence to the different masses, resulting in a harmonious, thoughtful, and rhythmic window strategy with heavy overhangs for minizing solar gain, a flat roof, and daylight monitors that punctuate the roof. The parabolic daylights monitors allow the light penetration deep within the darker internal areas of the building.
The design features an array of skylights that bring daylight into the upper living area, floor-to-ceiling windows, and multiple decks to create a variety of outdoor entertaining spaces with stunning valley views back toward Mt. Tam which frames Frank Lloyd Wright’s Marin County Civic Center.
“Drawing inspiration from the Marin Civic Center across the valley, we considered our building as an organic extension of the features of the site– an architecture that exists in harmony with nature and that utilizes its contect as a resource,” Kirby continues. “Wright said, ‘never put a building on top of a hill. Because then it looks like a man-made object sitting on a hill. You always put it on the slope, so it seems to be emerging from the hill — like part of the hill.’ This allowed us to create terraces, providing multiple outdoor spaces and maximizing the allowable square footage without it appearing locked into its context which inclues a seasonal stream.”
The plan is rigorous in terms of diagram and strategy, with a master bedroom on the lower level and access to a deck that sticks out, like a Pirate’s plank, on the main level. The dining room and kitchen, living area, two bedrooms and a bathroom complete the main level. The bedrooms have access to the roof via the master bedroom volume on the right-hand side. The left side features a two-and-a-half-storey studio space, with a two-car garage on top.
“We looked to the architectural marvel that is Louis Kahn’s museum in Texas for the implementation of three light monitors on the roof, creating a system of indirect lighting that penetrates the hillside depths of the building,” explains Mason Kirby. “The brows of the building are determined by solar angles, and the aim was to ensure every room was filled with natural light, the woodwork hiding structural elements while enabling the building to resonate with nature’s rhythms.”
Photography by Joseph Schell.
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