Private Paradise: A Richardson Bay Home Overlooking the Golden Gate Bridge

A home on Richardson Bay overlooks Mount Tamalpais, the Golden Gate Bridge, and the San Francisco skyline.

This article was written by J. Michael Welton. Photography courtesy of Belvedere.

A steep slope, panoramic views, and a hands-on client drove the design of a 7,200-square-foot home overlooking Richardson Bay, just north of San Francisco.

The project was a collaboration between Aidlin Darling Design and Blasen Landscape Architecture, with furnishings selected by Shelley & Co. Interior Design. Their client, a successful venture capitalist, was involved every step of the way.

The site he purchased features a driveway with a 15-percent grade down to the home’s site, which itself sits on a 20- to 30-percent slope. “We created a journey from the top of the street, obscuring any views of other houses and opening up to the view of the bay,” says Adam Rouse, project architect at Aidlin Darling Design. “You’re experiencing this house from the top level down.” Rouse and Joshua Aidlin, co-founder of the San Francisco-based firm bearing his name, wanted to integrate outdoor spaces into that steep slope so that their client and his family could spend their time outside.

To do that, the architects first camped out in a dilapidated 1960s house on site. They studied the microclimate coming off the water, the potential for indoor/outdoor spaces, and the impact of neighbors on either side. Before they lifted a pencil, they wanted to see how the site could satisfy their client’s desires.

“He wanted a very modern home with an extremely organic palette that contrasted with modern materials,” Aidlin says. “He was very open about how that could be realized–and he was interested in Japanese architecture.” They tore down the older home, but kept its sweeping outlook. Sausalito is to the west, the Golden Gate Bridge southwest, Mount Tamalpais northwest, and San Francisco is in the distance. “The original house got it right for the floorplan, and we made only a slight variation on the plan, to open up diagonal view corridors,” Rouse says.

Aidlin and Rouse pushed the home down on the site, so only a half-story is visible from the driveway. “There’s a synergy about where the house sits and how it relates to topography and views,” landscape architect Eric Blasen says. The client was interested in the kinds of plants the landscape architects used across the half-acre site. “He was involved a lot in the project,” he says. “Some clients are, more or less, but he listened and made the best of it.”

The result is a house that focuses on what can be seen from the inside looking out. “That’s our world,” Blasen says. “He was definitely an advocate of the outside and getting it the way he wanted it, which was good.” The new home rises up out of the ground with warm-tinted, board-formed concrete. Atop that is dry-stacked stone. As it rises to three levels, it gets lighter—with a skin of vertical, dark-patinaed copper sheets, plus stained Western Red Cedar. “There’s a ribbed texture to almost all the materials, whether it’s the trellis, the horizontal board-formed concrete, the standing-seam copper, or the windows trellised for a horizontal or vertical articulation,” Aidlin says.

On the roof, the architects placed stones hand-harvested from the beaches in Baja, for a Zen-like, Japanese-garden look. Out front, they designed an entry courtyard with its own dining area, shielded from the elements. “The courtyard is a composition of forms and layers of plants that has a richness to it,” Blasen says. “It’s a place to hang out if the weather gets foggy or windy—a protected place.”

For a house its size, it’s a hidden gem. “From the water or the street 100 feet below, it looks like just a sliver, and gives a very modest impression,” Aiden says. “And it’s one with the landscape, rather than calling itself out for you to pay attention to it.”

By the time interior designer Shelley Cahan was brought on board, most of the home’s interior finishes were fairly well buttoned up. So her primary assignment was to make the interior design an extension of the architecture. “I didn’t want it to feel like it hadn’t been thought about at the time when the architects were working through the finishes,” she says. “I wanted it to feel curated and fluid, and that it all went beautifully together.”

Her color palette was driven by the earth tones of Richardson Bay and the mountaintops in the distance. “I wanted it to speak to the incredible views,” she says. “I was trying to achieve a luxe feel—the fabrics had to be soft, comfortable, and approachable, with nothing shiny or glossy.” She was also responsible for bringing new furnishings into the home—nothing was old or reused—and working closely with the client on each interior furnishing decision. “He was exacting and involved in every aspect of the design process,” she says.

But he was as generous as he was exacting—choosing a number of high-end vendors for fixtures and furnishings, like Holly Hunt, Christian Liaigre, Alison Berger, Caste, and Joseph Jeup. He also trusted his interior designer with a dramatic interior that paid off in spades after two years’ work. “It will always be one of my most beautiful projects,” she says.

Rouse knows how much his client valued his home. “He was originally thinking of selling this one and keeping one he had on Belvedere Island, but he decided to sell that and keep this,” he says.

That’s because, Cahan says, it was his own private paradise.

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