San Francisco, California

Places To See

City Lights
Four Seasons SF
Autodesk Gallery
swissnex San Francisco
3A Gallery
DWR. Potrero Hill
Brava Theater Center
Hayes Valley Park
The Mission
Odegard San Francisco
San Francisco Zoo
SFMOMA
Fort Mason Center
Altman Siegel Gallery SF
Ferry Plaza Farmers Market
Yerba Buena Center for the Arts
Pacific Energy Center
The Delancey Street Screening Room
Gump's
Academy of Art University 79NM Auditorium
Economy Restaurant Fixtures
Forest Restaurant Supply
Kamei Restaurant Supply
Le Sanctuaire
First Amendment Gallery

Articles

Coffee Break: San Francisco's Coffee Bar

When you walk into the Financial District's newest third-wave coffee hot spot, Coffee Bar, it may seem like you're waiting under the arch of a proscenium rather than in line for a piping hot latte…
Contained

Two San Francisco art and travel addicts overhauled a loft—and customized a pair of shipping containers—to accommodate their collection and reflect their passions.
Highlights of Dwell Design Lab

This past weekend I attended Dwell's first annual Design Lab, which took over a raw penthouse space in the new Millenium Tower in San Francisco's SOMA district and spotlighted 13 local designers…
Dwell Design Lab Recap

Over the weekend of October 29th and 30th, Dwell hosted its first ever Design Lab in San Francisco. Bay Area-based designers, architects, and landscape architects gathered at the Millennium Tower…
Level Headed

To convert a musty mid-century house with a nonsensical floor plan into a modern and space-efficient family home, three intrepid designers played a bit of architectural Tetris.
Good Clean Fun

Far from pandering to the whine of youth, this urban play garden fosters thoughtful interaction in a protected setting within the bustle of San Francisco.
Consumer Retorts

Chris Houston, the charmingly curmudgeonly owner of Modern Artifacts in San Francisco, is not your typical retailer. Though his shop is packed to the rafters with an eclectic and highly covetable…
Visiting H.D. Buttercup

Without condoning knockoffs, let me say: It is a thrill to walk into a furniture shop and discover a slew of handsome and vaguely familiar-looking design pieces that I can actually afford. This was…
Bay Wash

With a presence in three centuries, Christi Azevedo’s Victorian survived the quake of 1906 and served as a laundry before its rebirth as a well-lit hybrid of old and new.
Top Notch

Tom Hanks is not known for horror films, but his 1986 flop, The Money Pit, has a terrifying premise: A seemingly small renovation consumes a couple’s life, devouring their reserves of time…
Highway Hideaway

Most beachfront houses treat the ocean as part of the visual landscape with panoramic views and wraparound balconies. Tom Lloyd-Butler’s beach house by Ernest Born, however, is deeply interior, and…
Mid-Century Mash-Up

Although postwar California modernism is generally associated with Southern California, the Bay Area’s own tradition has begun in recent years to be more widely acknowledged, and its surviving…
Taking Liberties

Designed and built in 1878 for Judge John Murphy, a 4,400-square-foot white structure has, from the outside, the undeniable characteristics of a classic San Francisco Victorian. Stepped back from…
Worth the Wait

Tucked into the side of a scenic San Francisco hill, one of the city’s more diminutive houses battles everything from dry rot to obstructionist neighbors in order to grow up.
San Francisco Is for Louvers

It may not be to Queen Anne's tastes, but 1234 Howard is true to its context.
Mission Statement

A house that survived the Great Quake and the intervening decades is reborn after a serious intervention by a modernist architect. David Baker’s carefully crafted rehabilitation kept the…
Standout in a Crowd

In architecturally conservative San Francisco, this house built on a 20-foot-wide lot proves that modern design can fit—literally and figuratively—in any neighborhood.
Fuseproject

In the San Francisco offices of Yves Béhar’s industrial design and branding firm, the work environment  suits the work.
Park 'N Play

It could have been a Sheetrock box, but as the house’s most frequently used point of entry, it deserved the same architectural respect.
Stoked to Soak

Compelling custom solutions to off-the-shelf problems are often hard to come by. But landscape architects James A. Lord and Roderick Wyllie relished the challenge of making a standard hot tub the…
Fawning Over Flora

Flora Grubb Gardens, the hippest plant merchant in the Bay Area, takes up residence in a new building as green as it is frondescent.
Beyond Terradome

Influenced by city dwellers whose windows open to concrete vistas or brick walls, San Francisco native Ric López decided to shift the view inward and back to nature.
Open Kitchen

A San Francisco architect turns his “inefficiency” kitchen into a modestly scaled and well-lit place to cook, eat, work, and enjoy the view—–even with his back turned.
Model Worthy

The true test of a kitchen’s mettle is not how it looks brand-new, but how it looks after a decade of wear and tear from heaving cleavers and spilling sauce.
Design for the Public

Public Architecture forges ahead into uncharted territory, and creates a model for fitting pro bono work into the daily practice of every firm.
Where the Sidewalk Ends

After taking on San Francisco City Hall, architect Jane Martin helped spawn a movement that has rendered the city’s sidewalks more hospitable to birds, bees, butterflies—and even to…
Noe Valley Renovation

It's rare that in a resident-architect collaboration, the resident picks the more dramatic design scheme than the architect. But the homeowners of this recently renovated San Francisco Victorian…
Victorian Revival

A couple’s dinner out at their neighborhood bistro provides just the right impetus for their restaurant-inspired kitchen renovation.
Project Runaway

Driven by the death of several appliances, a San Francisco family finds that a spanking new kitchen delivers a good dose of domestic harmony along with the excuse to execute a complete home…
Sunset District Renovation

The residents of atelier KS's first renovation like stuff. When the couple, who lives in San Francisco's Sunset District, first invited the husband-wife design team to their home, the garage they…
Hot Studs

The recent history of Janna Stark's San Francisco flat, located in an 1890's Victorian house, is literally burned into the wall.
Just Redo It

What do you get when you give a couple of designers unlimited creative license on a very limited budget? For Andrew Dunbar and Zoee Astrakhan, the possibilities were limitless.
The Wong Show

Artworks often need open light-filled galleries that allow them to breathe, but sometimes they need intimate spaces to help them foster one-on-one connections with viewers. In the second camp lies…