The Hillside House by SB Architects
SB Architects have designed the Hillside House in Mill Valley, California.
Full description after the photos….
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The Hillside House by SB Architects:
Nestled in the hills of Mill Valley, California, just across the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco, Hillside House has just received certification as the first LEED for Homes Platinum custom home in Marin County, and one of only a handful in Northern California.
Designed by San Francisco-based SB Architects, an international firm well-known for the design of site-sensitive resort and mixed-use projects around the world, and built by well-known green builder McDonald Construction & Development, this home is a statement of what is possible combining “high design with high sustainability.”
The four-story home – clad with beautiful, sustainable Western Red Cedar siding – is set on a steep hillside site that provides for a very vertical design with living and private zones situated on multiple separate floors. Numerous outdoor and covered terraces and balconies capitalize on stunning views of the bay and the San Francisco skyline beyond. The home’s many green aspects include:
·Western Red Cedar siding
·Energy Star-Rated Whirlpool appliances
·Kohler low-flow plumbing fixtures
·Mythic zero-VOC paints
·High-recycled content interior concrete from Concreteworks
·Sustainably produced stone veneers from Eldorado Stone
·Sustainably harvested floors and cabinetry from Plantation Hardwoods
·New World Millworks, reclaimed timber and recycled metal roofing
Every inch of this LEED Platinum custom home has been designed to maximize its sustainability, in direct response to the site, trees and views. Consequently, this home lives far larger than its actual footprint, but with an impact that is far less.
Visit the SB Architects website – here.
Photography by Mariko Reed
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Ethan on 10 May 2010 at 12:05 pm #
Beautiful house but… it seems like a ninja could easily gain access. I would like my house to be ninja-proof.
TW on 10 May 2010 at 3:06 pm #
Another monstrously big ‘green’ home.
Whilst it is commendable that architects and builders are trying to be green, all of the ‘green aspects’ listed should be just par for the course these days for any decent architect.
There is more to sustainability than plantation timbers and energy rated appliances.
A large footprint = a larger energy consumption.
Jimw on 10 May 2010 at 5:15 pm #
Beautiful home,deftly detailed with a smart material palette. And the site and locale anchor the allure and admiration. I’d live there….but I don’t think I could even if it was given to me. I agree with TW on this. As design professionals I do believe we have to take on the moral obligation to shape and influence through education to the commissioning public a need to really, really evaluate needs versus wants. Money doesn’t exempt one’s worldly responsiblity.
I’m have become extremely suspect and critical of the LEED moniker….to me it has simply become a social means of acceptance of anything that is designated so. I’ve worked in firms that position themselves to do every project as a LEED candidate. Many times it’s not so much about the solution as it is one’s ability to know how to submit tailored “documentation”. Energy star appliances, recycled this, reclaimed that, controlled footprint….on and on and on. It is fast becoming nothing more than a label and people feel a socially moral fulfillment in attaining it. As a friend of mine who has been doing “green” for nearly 40 years has told me again and again….”its not what you do, it’s who you are”.
I’m making big assumptions about the people who live here, but something tells me the LEED moniker is not a result of how they live their life, but rather a noteworthy certificate that can be proudly professed during dinner parties. I grew up near a family with 7 kids – 5 boys and 2 girls. They were not poverty poor, but they lived in a 3 bedroom 1 1/2 story bungalow with one bathroom,an eat-in kitchen and a living room. That’s it. They lived simply, but they lived magnificently. All the kids went to college and made the most of their upbringing. We could all step back from our need of excess and really evaluate what it is we really need, not what we really want. While I appreciate and drool over images like the ones of this house, its like eating a whole bag of chips in a single sitting….tasty, feel satisfied, but an hour later you feel miserable from the fat and sodium and are left with a hollow gut. What did I really accomplish?
(I apologize for the dissertation).
Greg on 10 May 2010 at 8:11 pm #
Wow, now we’re telling everyone else how they should live. So what if someone was able to build a great family in a small house. Good for them! Come on folks, if I was sporting the kind of money it takes to put a house like this together in the Bay Area I’d be building my dream home too. The fact that they chose to qualify for LEED means that they made a good effort to at least do the “right thing.” The fact that it wasn’t your “right thing” shouldn’t detract from the effort they took to accomplish this admirable goal. When you look at the actual footprint of the house it’s smaller than most one story ranch houses. They just decided to go up instead of out. With the view they most likely have I would probably have done the same.
Dano on 10 May 2010 at 9:17 pm #
Beautiful and tasteful! Nice contemporary execution without some of the serility you see in other homes. Very “homey” feel.
Christian on 11 May 2010 at 1:43 am #
My first impression was: How many families live in there?
It’s a huge collection of many, many wonderful details, but the overall impression is that it’s very messy, lots of bits and pieces together that fail to form a unity.
TW on 11 May 2010 at 3:50 am #
Greg – it has nothing to do with the way they live. I personally am trying to build small and sustainable but I don’t begrudge anyone who doesn’t have the same passion.It’s a lovely house and it has tried to be green. But sustainable in the long term it is not.
What I do object to is the proliferation of projects that show up on blogs and in magazines that do what this does – PROFESS their sustainability sensibilities before they profess their design ones yet showing little regard to true sustainable principles.
Present me a beautiful house with a well thought out design concept and I will appreciate it. Present a house with a focus on sustainability that screams the opposite and I’ll question it.
marshen on 11 May 2010 at 4:33 am #
I like the nice woodsy tree house feel of this house. It looks very livable and comfortable without being excessive in materials or proportion. The black faced bevel front fireplace is spectacular.
hZ! on 11 May 2010 at 5:05 am #
I used to play a fun game as a kid, drawing a cube and dissecting it with three planes, then dissecting all of the resulting cubes with a further three planes each etc. Then, I’d refine order from the confusion of lines by shading the internal faces of all the ‘visible’ cubes. The result would be a kind of three-dimensional mega-hash “#” with many more lines than the quoted example.
That’s what this house reminds me of. It’s as if the designers have set themselves the game of splitting the available space into as many, and as small, sub-spaces as they could, and then they have set about filling each sub-space with as much STUFF as they could, concentrating on projecting planes, edges and corners. It’s a disquieting profusion of barkable, bruiseable hardnesses to injure the struggling claustrophobe. A divisive house, probably in more ways than one.
I guess one benefit of this is to sharpen ones longing for, and pleasure in viewing, what’s outside the windows. No doubt intentional, but the price has been too high.
Luke on 11 May 2010 at 5:24 am #
I like this one. Simple yet tasteful, i think i like the interior more than the exterior. Would i live here…maybe, for a while, but eventually i’d give it up. But good job anyway. At least its better than the japanese one earlier.
zero34 on 11 May 2010 at 8:48 am #
i’m with Christian on this one. It has nice elements, but wen looked at overall, it seems sort of confusing on the thought process..
Btw, what the hell happened on the ceiling of that room and bathroom?
Steve on 11 May 2010 at 12:43 pm #
Beautiful house. But I have to say it’s fair to critique the green virtues of the house, when that is exactly what the architects are bragging about. As green as a Hummer running on biodiesel. But still a beautiful house.
Miss Honey on 11 May 2010 at 2:46 pm #
Oh come on guys it’s not that big. It’s just a visual effect. I like this house, it looks very homey.
TW on 12 May 2010 at 3:24 pm #
Not that big?? It’s set over 4 floors so has to be at least 240m2 of internal space. The average US McMansion is currently sitting at 190m2.
Vanessa Bonghanoy on 18 May 2010 at 9:18 pm #
I like the nature look… It’ seems so tranquil and it’s as if you can feel the cool breeze just by looking with the photos. The outside view rocks. But so is the inside.
Dennis on 06 Aug 2010 at 5:21 am #
@TW: shouldn’t you add an extra 0 to your figures?
190m2 for a “mansion”? are you not familiar with the metric system?
Dennis on 06 Aug 2010 at 5:22 am #
PS this house is nowhere near 1900m2
Rob on 19 Aug 2010 at 11:53 am #
The home has exactly 2,113 square feet of interior space. That makes it significantly smaller than the average size of an American home, which currently stands at something like 2,300+ square feet. Hardly a huge McMansion.
Robnauticus on 21 Oct 2010 at 4:12 pm #
Looks a lot like all the newer places around Portland, OR.
Yawn…
Sustainability is not just about materials used, it is about being able to self produce resources. Where is the solar, rainwater collection, rooftop gardens, etc…