Structural Integrity

When this story began, in 2003, there was a chiropractor, an acupuncturist, their three cats and one dog, their friend the designer and a cramped turn-of-the-century cottage in outer Noe Valley. By the time it ended three years later, the three cats and one dog had been joined by a toddler, and the Arts-and-Crafts cottage had morphed, with the help of numerous artists and craftspeople, into a “green” dream house—and the chiropractor and acupuncturist were still friends with their designer. You could call it the tale of a minor, and sustainable, miracle.

At first, Markus Striebeck (the chiropractor) and Miyoko Miyata (the acupuncturist) simply wanted to enlarge their 900-square-foot cottage. However, as they and their friend Michael Logue, of SF’s Logue Studio Design, evaluated the site—the structure was set back on its hillside lot, unlike its neighbors, and had views extending over the adjacent gardens as far as the downtown skyline and Mount Diablo—they realized it was, as Logue says, “a golden piece of property.” They went from thinking of it as a temporary housing solution to seeing it as the house they would live in, perhaps, for good.

For Striebeck and Miyata, this meant creating something not only sustainable but organic, in every sense of the word. “I have a great interest in green building,” says Striebeck. “I’m very interested in the interaction of human being and environment, but I also wanted something a little bit contemporary.”  Which is what he and Miyata got: a modern yet contextually sensitive assemblage of shapes familiar to any SF neighborhood—turret-like towers, gabled roofs, even a widow’s-walk-like bridge running between the towers. Right now, the towers are clad in a bright, shiny copper; over the years, though, that copper will weather to a mellow verdigris. “How the house ages in time is a really important part of the process,” Logue points out. “So picking materials that go through their own evolution was important.”

Also important to the clients was that the outdoor spaces would flow into the indoor spaces, and vice versa. “Our daughter, Mia, really likes that particular aspect,” Striebeck laughs. “The house has a very nice flow to it.” And all of that indoor-outdoor space—five decks in all—helps to regulate the heat and air circulation. “We have radiant heat on the lower two floors,” he says, “ but we didn’t think it’d be necessary to have heating on the top floor—we just put in extra insulation in the roof. Now, you open this window and that window and—whoosh!—the ventilation works fantastically.” Not only is the airflow created by passive—and environmentally friendly—means, but that radiant heating down below? Powered almost entirely by solar panels. “Probably about 60 or 65 percent of our electrical consumption is covered by solar,” says Striebeck.

“Miyoko and Markus really drove the green portion of the project,” Logue says. “We had ideas about it, but they would go to the green expos and come back with materials and ask, ‘What do you think about … ?’” One such discovery was the plaster that covers the house’s interior. Called American Clay, it’s a breathable, sustainable finish that can be tinted with natural dyes. Another was the eucalyptus that’s used for some of the kitchen counters—it’s sustainably harvested and naturally antibacterial.

“Being green has been part of the architectural community’s conversation, but it comes up more and more with clients—more and more are educated enough to ask about it,” notes Logue. “There’s a critical mass that’s really happening now. The aesthetic aspect is changing tremendously too, which has always been the big negative in this process—everyone associates green architecture with stacked tires and adobe construction. Now, all of a sudden, businesses are seeing there’s money to be made in the green industry. The options are increasing tenfold.”

Not that Striebeck has any problem with that old preconception of organic materials. “That’s another thing about the green. I think it’s a little bit more forgiving in its natural texture—the imperfections just make it part of the story.” A story, in this case, with a jolly green ending.