Portola Valley Home

One well-crafted detail can tell a story of a place and bring character to a project of any scale. Taking inspiration from this small home’s enormous backyard conifer trees, we developed a perforated steel guardrail motif for the new central stair based on the lifecycle of a pinecone. We developed a computer script to set up parameters for the organic growth of the pattern –setting in motion the transition from a tightly closed cone to an open shape– just as a pinecone grows and thrives by hurling its seeds into the wind.

Sometimes we need a little radical surgery to save the patient. Here, a well-intentioned prior owner developed their attic with a new closed stair placed squarely in the middle of the home, like an immovable rock in the middle of a stream. Once demolished, we breathed new life into the space and created an open stair as the centerpiece to the home. The classic bones of this Craftsman cottage were there –just obscured by a series of unfortunate events.