The opportunity to renovate the Garden Apartment in a 1961 William Wurster designed building allowed us to accentuate and improve many of the existing qualities of the space. The clients desired an open, modern, gallery-like refuge for their weekly visits to the city and their backgrounds in art and textiles helped provide a simple solution. The renovation was achieved through replacing walls that divided and isolated spaces with sliding planes of drapery and glass, modernizing windows and washing the space in white.

The existing separate rooms are unified in the remodel’s open contiguous space. An elongated Bulthaup kitchen wall maintains a quiet simplicity when not in use and becomes an elegant stage for cooking when entertaining guests. Built-in desks and bookshelves allow functions to flow efficiently. The existing bathroom was expanded to include a double vanity, open shower, and a large soaking tub. Here translucent panels of glass provide privacy without creating confinement. A large sliding glass panel serves the dual purpose of enclosing the toilet room while also obscuring bathroom necessities. A fireplace was added to bring warmth on cool winter (and summer) days in San Francisco and is visible from all the spaces.

The existing orientation and garden relationship provided soft natural light and opportunities to blur the line of indoor and outdoor spaces. The remodel capitalizes on this with new windows and doors detailed with recessed frames and, where possible, extending from floor to ceiling. A new large sliding door to the garden furthers connection to the outdoor space.

A new palette of warm white wood floors, white tile, translucent glass, and sheer white and warm grey draperies creates an airy, ethereal quality to the space and allows select artwork, choice personal items, and food and drink to be the focus.

The Lundberg Design Shop fabricated the bathroom hardware and accessories for this project.