Grab A Drink At This Communal Coffee Shop In Oakland

2024 Best of Year Winner for Coffee/Tea

The concept for this 1,200-square-foot Oakland coffee shop, The Caffè by Mr. Espresso designed by Jones Haydu, is informed by the Italian ritual of drinking an espresso at a communal bar. At the center is an island where all activity happens. On two sides, its standing-height construction is made of white oak slabs from a single tree that fell in nearby Sonoma County in 2008. One hosts a low-slung pastry display, the other, stools to enjoy meeting with a friend. Behind, baristas work at countertops topped in hand-polished copper. To further emphasize this hub, a crown of concave timber slats floats overhead alongside linear pendant fixtures by Dals Lighting. A second curved wood series lines the walls to meet it at this clerestory level, creating a domelike visual pattern that appears either open or closed when viewed from various angles on the ground. Along the perimeter, a Calacatta marble ledge offers another luxurious option to pause with a caffeinated beverage.

PROJECT TEAM: HULETT JONES.

Inside A Mountain Chalet In Montana With Sweeping Views

2024 Best of Year Winner for Large Country House

The extreme weather conditions of a site 8,400 feet above sea level informed nearly every aspect of this 9,000-square-foot home in Big Sky, Montana. O’Neill Rose Architects positioned it in a cut in Lone Mountain to block harsh northwest winds, then built a tall stone base that withstands 12-foot-tall snowbanks and extends to support a cantilevered volume with views of the Spanish Peaks. The main inspiration came from timber snow fences, which are used across the American West to protect cattle from drifting snow. The design team translated the concept into a shou sugi ban–treated wood screen that wraps the upper level; it artfully captures snow in the facade and shelters outdoor areas like the hot tub terrace. Inside, a geothermal heating system, high-performance insulation, and triple-glazed windows form an energy-efficient cocoon. Fluted ash millwork references the mountain’s pole pines, and sculptural plaster ceilings recall snow drifts, creating serene spaces in constant dialogue with nature.

How This Silicon Valley Installation Nods To Viniculture

Think Silicon Valley, and tech is often the first association. Yet the stretch of northern California is historically engrained in agriculture and viniculture, its more than 80 vineyards attesting to the latter. No stranger to the area, or to these pages, Virginia San Fratello maintains her practice Rael San Fratello in nearby Oakland. An architect, educator, and author, she also calls herself a “creative technologist” and a “material scientist”; her 3D-printed clay vessels were included in our 2023 “Big Ideas.”

All these elements coalesced in Plaid!, San Fratello’s recent project with colleagues Cody Glen and Mattias Rael for the Art Kiosk, a Redwood City, California, gallery that hosts temporary, thought-provoking installations by Bay Area creatives. Like a fine wine, Plaid! tastefully blended technology, site, and sustainability. The 150-square-foot installation was composed of 300 rods in recycled clear glass. Connected by 3D-printed nodes, the vessels were colored cabernet, zinfandel, and chardonnay, but those are not figurative names; the rods were actually filled with those liquids as well as with others representing the region’s prolific spinach, turmeric, and oyster-mushroom crops, made with water and food coloring. Woven together, they formed a 12-foot-tall, plaidlike structure highlighting how vernacular and repurposed industrial materials, when paired with computational design, can create luminous spatial assemblies. rael-sanfratello.com

Olson Kundig Offers a Fresh Narrative on the Life of Bob Dylan for a Center Honoring His Work

2022 Best of Year Winner for Exhibition

Bob Dylan is famously enigmatic. He reinvents his own history, rarely grants interviews, and skipped the ceremony when he won the Nobel Prize in 2016. Dylan’s archive, which the George Kaiser Family Foundation acquired that same year, hardly clears things up. Now held at the Bob Dylan Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma, its over 100,000 items—including notebooks, recordings, and videos—reveal little about the man himself. For Olson Kundig, the firm selected to conceive the center’s interiors and exhibition design, the musician’s mystique presented an opportunity to take an unconventional narrative approach to the $10 million endeavor.

The project is located in the city’s downtown arts district and shares a block-long building with the Woody Guthrie Center. Both are owned by the GKFF and part of its mission to turn Tulsa into a cultural destination. (Dylan was a disciple of Guthrie, but otherwise has no connection to Oklahoma.) In 2017, the GKFF held a competition for the design of a facility that would house the archive and related exhibits. Architect Alan Maskin, a principal at and co-owner of Olson Kundig—and a lifelong Dylan fan—was relieved to learn that the musician was not involved. “I didn’t want to worry about pleasing Bob Dylan,” he recalls. “I wanted to make a portrait of him.”

Inspired by the Akira Kurosawa film Rashomon, Maskin and his team’s winning proposal tells the story of Dylan’s creative trajectory from multiple perspectives. “Early in his career, Dylan started to create falsehoods and believed they were as relevant as truths,” the architect continues. “It’s interesting to make a portrait of someone who embraces that.” The center could never be a traditional museum presenting a static history of Dylan’s life. Instead, a diverse creative team—including filmmaker Jennifer Lebeau, poet Joy Harjo, biographer Sean Wilentz, and fellow musician Elvis Costello—contributed to the project. Their voices inform what Maskin calls a “cubist portrait” of the artist that can evolve over time.

The site occupies an 11,000-square-foot, two-story building in what was originally a paper warehouse. A century old, its exposed brick walls and thick concrete columns had been retained but the space overall had been modernized for the previous tenant, a gallery. Olson Kundig conceived the interiors and galleries in tandem. Maskin met with archivists to understand the collection, then developed a narrative arc and drew the floor plan. “I create a storyboard of the visitor experience, informed by imagery and objects, and formulate the environment through a storytelling lens,” he explains. The exhibits had to appeal to a range of audiences, from Dylanologists to casual listeners, and go beyond the musician to explore broader ideas about creativity.

The narrative starts on the street, where a 30-by-90-foot mural of Dylan stares out from the brick facade. The graffiti artist Eric T. Burke painted it based on a rare Jerry Schatzberg photograph and layered it onto existing ghost signage. “Eric let the past permeate through in the same way that history has informed Dylan,” Maskin notes. Visitors enter into a small foyer that establishes the center’s theme with two portraits showing the musician before and after he became a star, and a Dylan quote: “Life isn’t about finding yourself or finding anything. Life is about creating yourself and creating things.” Dylan himself, who’s also a metal worker, made the iron welcoming gate.

Olson Kundig collaborated with 59 Productions, a British design and production studio, on the project’s multimedia installations. “That team has a theater background, which was perfect because we were looking for this to be a visceral experience,” Maskin says. Visitors wear headsets to listen to music and other content. Near the start of the galleries, Lebeau and 59 created an immersive film gallery of archival footage; in a clever bit of stagecraft, sheets of acrylic hang from thin steel rods to mimic paper flying out of typewriters. Elsewhere, visitors can play the part of a sound mixer in a music studio or listen to songs that inspired Dylan at a digital jukebox curated by Costello.

The exhibits explore the creative process in various ways. One gallery digs deep into six seminal songs, like “Tangled up in Blue,” and shows manuscripts and how tunes changed in the recording studio. Beyond is a library curated by Harjo with Dylan’s writing and books that influenced him along with her own work. It segues visitors to temporary exhibitions on the second floor that focus on other artists; current shows feature additional photographs by Schatzberg and “The Gift,” which further delves into the creative process.

The second floor also contains the Bob Dylan Archive, located in a reading room that’s only open to researchers. “We couldn’t let the public in, so we created views in,” Maskin says. He surrounded the room with boxes displaying items from the archive. Among them is a bag stuffed with fan mail from the ’60’s. Dylan held onto it for decades, but, when it arrived in Tulsa, the letters were unopened. No one knows why he kept them. The notes show how Dylan touched many people—but only deepen his mystery. The Bob Dylan Center invites us to draw our own conclusions.

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Olson Kundig: stephen yamada-heidner; marlene chen; holly simon; ryan botts; brian havener; karen duan; aiym zhumasheva

lilly architects: architect of record

tillotson design associates: lighting consultant

wallace design collective: structural engineer

phillips + gomez: mep

59 Productions: Interactive Exhibits

bbi engineers; creo exhibits: exhibit fabrication

eklipse architectural lighting: lighting

benjamin moore & co.; sherwin-williams company; sydney harbour paint company: paint

Jones Haydu and Evans Design Studio Employ a Sustainable Strategy for this San Francisco Office

Even though its name is Inclusive Capital Partners, the firm is somewhat of an outlier in the investment community. First, it lays claim to environmentally-friendly investing, not only in terms of locating companies for its own portfolio but in having its partners achieve board membership when possible. Second, its headquarters is in an erstwhile warehouse within San Francisco’s Presidio, the 1,500-acre national park protected under landmark status. That posed constraints for first-time collaborators Amber Evans of her eponymous design studio and Jones Haydu. Regardless, the striking results are both rustic and refined. 

Evans was the catalyst. “I knew George Hamel, the founder and managing partner, before he branched off from ValueAct Capital for a more sustainable approach,” she begins. But at 12,167 square feet, the project was more than she alone could handle.  “I always wanted to work with Paul and Hulett,” so timing was propitious for this first-time collaboration.

“We worked as an all-inclusive team, operating as a single studio with the benefit of Amber as an additional designer,” Jones jumps in vis-à-vis process. “We came up with four or five schemes then whittled them down to two.” Of constraints, he says, “they take landmark status seriously.” That meant retaining some existing conditions while ascertaining that subsequent interventions “don’t mimic history but are clearly seen as new.” 

The envelope with its oak flooring, beams, and bow-truss structure was kept intact as were the eight added skylights bringing light into what had been a dim interior. Then, came a straightforward layout. “We worked with the notion of letting the space be what it is,” Jones continues. That meant enclosed offices, much the norm for an investment firm, at the perimeter with a continuous pale wooden cap and darker wood columns framing their glass-fronted enclosures. Occupying the 100-foot-long central spine is the boardroom with two points of entry and acoustic wood material surrounding a massive marble table for 16 that is ringed by leather chairs and overlooked by a Vincent van Duysen lighting fixture for Flos. A pair of conference rooms and workstations, too, populate the area as does the reception desk of blackened steel plates and Venetian plaster. Overall, the vibe is undeniably modern, but with a nod to “imagery of old-growth redwood trees, an important visual touchstone for ICP,” Jones notes. Evans adds: “The clients had worked with a branding firm for identity and came up with the idea of the Hyperion redwood.”

Abstracted, the massive tree takes form as an extraordinary weathering steel sculpture standing behind the reception desk. Designed by the team and fabricated by Joe Chambers, a local, it stands 15 feet tall and is composed of 36 thin plates held together by internal magnets and assembled on site. Though not as heavy as a Richard Serra piece, it nevertheless weighs in at more than 4,500 pounds and required reinforcing of floor joists below. Notes Evans: “It was a great way to have an interactive design charette.” Jones reinforces that collaboration, complimenting it as “ego-less design.” Haydu concurs: “Good ideas were generated from fruitful interactions.” 

Aidlin Darling Design Creates a Stunning Home on a Hill in Napa Valley

IIDA Award Winner for Residences

For Aidlin Darling Design and “passionate clients with exquisite taste and humble values,” according to co-partner Joshua Aidlin, this house, perched atop 10 acres overlooking California’s Napa Valley, is a phoenix rising from the ashes. Literally. The firm’s original design was destroyed by a wildfire midway through construction. Fearless, owner and architect were determined to rebuild, making the resulting 4,000-square-foot home both resilient and an homage to its owners, specifically, the entrepreneur husband’s rural Welsh roots and the wife, who’s transitioning from her high-power law career to a passion for farming. Ergo the project’s name, Three Gables. The moniker also serves as the organizing scheme, since the residence is composed of three structures, each with said roof formation and built of board-formed concrete, standing-seam steel, and glass, with weathering steel used for landscape walls at the open-air entry procession.

Each structure is dedicated to a family member. The main house is the project’s heart, containing the industrial kitchen and living-dining expanse with an oak ceiling and access to a pair of cantilevered decks. Upstairs, an open loft is conceived as a study area for the couple’s son. Similarly, the wife’s office is an airy expanse accessed by a rooftop bridge setting up a treehouselike environment. The husband’s retreat is conveniently located over the garage.

Aidlin Darling Design: joshua aidlin; peter larsen; ryan hughes; mason hayes; cherie lau; tory wolcott green; michael pierry; sean kakigi

Olson Kundig Overhauls an Experiential Campus for Kids in the Golden Gate National Recreation Area

2021 Best of Year winner for Kids Zone

Steeped in museum design in general and children’s spaces in particular—Noah’s Ark at Skirball Cultural Center, Los Angeles, and its counterpart, The Children’s World of the Jewish Museum Berlin, for example—Olson Kundig was right at home planning the phased overhaul of this 7 ½-acre experiential campus for kids in the Golden Gate National Recreation area. First up are five new permanent exhibits—interactive activities and environments on which design principal Alan Maskin and his team collaborated with early learning experts from the museum’s research division. Tot Spot for infants and toddlers focuses on touch and engagement through elements like a waterbed, rolling land masses, and a black-and-white mural (very young children don’t perceive color the same way as their elders). How Things Work dissects familiar items like a circuit board, small car, and washing machine, encouraging kids of all ages to envision themselves as creators. Try It Studio features machines such as a kinetic drawing arm and an interactive music box that youngsters from age 3 to 10 can use and adapt. And there are two outdoor exhibits: Faith, a decommissioned commercial fishing boat, and Gumnut Grove, three treehouses to climb through, helping to build confidence and motor skills.

Olson Kundig: Alan Maskin; Marlene Chen; Megan Zimmerman; Crystal Coleman, Jerome Tryon; Ryan Botts; Tessa Crespo; Jared Luther; Sarah Muchow; Mike Lee