SOMA Residence, Artist Gallery & Studio

An internationally exhibited artist and her family reached out to us, wanting to refurbish a large two-level building with a small rear courtyard. An industrial building-turned-auto repair garage, the existing building was dark, rundown, and pungent with grease, but destined to become a custom studio, gallery, and home for her family. 

The existing historic industrial-use building provided a unique canvas for this carefully considered adaptive re-use project in the rapidly evolving SOMA neighborhood of San Francisco. Historic elements of the front facade were restored and refurbished, while new modernist infill elements were introduced at the ground level, creating a dynamic relationship between new and old as experienced from the street and pedestrian level.

Because of the considerable amount of space available for the project — about 4,500 square feet on each level — the program was organized by floor. The ground floor includes a two-car garage, residential guest unit, and new art gallery and studio. The second floor was transformed into a full-floor "NYC-style" residential loft focused toward a new 20'x20' convertible courtyard carved into the existing floor plate with a motorized operable glass roof and expansive upper-level roof deck. A rooftop terrace — covering about a quarter of the total roof surface — is big enough for a barbecue with friends, sunbathing, or playing with the children.

As a multidisciplinary artist, the client felt that the project needed extensive interplay between art, sculpture, and contemporary architecture. She specifically wanted the qualities of light, space, texture, materiality, and flow to holistically connect these components.

A unique constraint for the site was the project's status as a historic industrial-use building, which required certain elements of the existing façade to remain unchanged. The resulting design merges clean modern expression with the building's industrial shell, creating a seamless transition from interior to exterior and from new to old.

With the existing historic facade painted black, the predominant colors are those of the interior materials. The ground floor features white plaster walls and concrete flooring, while the upper residential floor incorporates warm-toned timber ceilings and a stand-out custom detail: a flame-red 1965 Fiat 500, suspended upside-down from the ceiling. Such unique touches are only to be expected in an artist's home.

Email interview conducted by John Hill.