Inside Muttville, the Cage-Free Dog Shelter Designed With Help From Ken Fulk

The carpet is Missoni. That’s what Sherri Franklin, founder and CEO of San Francisco’s Muttville dog rescue, tells me as we walk up a set of stairs with pink zigzag upholstering to the second level of the Adoption Center, one of three overhauled industrial buildings in the nonprofit’s recently renovated headquarters. If designer carpet is the most atypical shelter feature I’ve noticed so far on my visit, a round light that looks suspiciously like an Astro Lighting Eclipse wall sconce also catches my eye. Later, I notice the same sconces decorating the main-level room where the dogs roam, play, and sleep freely, near a few fixtures that either are Constance Guisset’s Vertigo pendant lamps for Petite Friture or, again, are incredibly sufficient dupes.

To be clear, the Missoni carpet isn’t in perfect condition. It actually looks well-trodden, either from its short so-far life at Muttville, or from one prior. "We got every bit of furniture donated," says Sherri, who operated the senior dog shelter out of her own home from 2007 until 2011, when it moved to its first official cage-free location. Though her oversize frames, patterned pants, and accent scarf, all in a similar ochre that accents her beige sweater and booties, tip me off that expressive style is probably a value of hers, that’s not why there’s so much capital D-decor here. Much of it came from the warehouse of Sherri’s good friend, interior designer Ken Fulk, whose team contributed (pro bono) to furnishing the three-building complex, which was renovated by California firm Tannerhecht Architecture.

Beyond possibly being first and foremost a favor for his friend, Fulk’s involvement with Muttville’s overhaul is not such a surprising addition to his résumé. The interior designer’s love for animals (and dogs specifically) is a well-established part of his brand, which extends from celebrity home, hotel, and restaurant decorating to his own home decor lines. (A recent New York Times profile said it best: "What Won’t This Decorator Do?")

Depending on your proximity to niche news about design or pets, or both, you’ll know that an established firm like Tannerhecht stepping in for the architecture is in keeping with the times. There’s a long history of designers dabbling in so-called "pet-tecture," and it’s only grown in recent years as our wider cultural obsession (and subsequent spending) around our pets grows. Where design-y dog houses, beds, and bowls are by now established territory, the "barkitecture boom" has more recently extended throughout our homes, from fine-art pet portraits and pottery to mini pet rooms (thank you TikTok) and at-home pet spas (cue: the rise of dog grooming YouTube content). It’s also trickled out beyond them in the form of luxe "canine kindergartens" and doggie daycares, and, interestingly, some of the most historically bleak sectors of animal architecture: pet hospitals and shelters. In Fulk’s celebrity-designer echelon, Kelly Wearstler recently designed a vet clinic in Ontario that channels a millennial-branded healthcare start-up—or The Wing for dogs.

The new Muttville shelter comprises 18,000 square feet of interior space: the Adoption Center (with the indoor play areas and offices), Home of New Beginnings (where the dogs go through intake), and Rescue Center (which houses the on-site vet clinic), all connected by a paved courtyard. It’s here where I lay eyes on a Chihuahua named Prince Bayani. He’s lifting a leg on the designated fire hydrant pee patch below artist Debra Walker’s towering Playland mural, which Sherri tells me is a reference to the city’s bygone amusement park. If the shelter’s interiors are colorful, the names it gives its temporary residents match. Over the next few hours, I’ll (happily) be approached for pets, sniffs, and the occasional bark by Corn Bread Stuffing, Dot Com, Cool Whip, Ophelia, and Squeak, among others. (In truth, I’m the one to approach Ophelia, who dons a fuzzy purple sweater and mostly stays put on a futon in the main area, as she’s largely lost her sight and hearing.)

As we walk through the courtyard toward the Home of New Beginnings, I ask Sherri about Fulk’s role in the project. He wasn’t directly involved "as often as I would’ve loved," she tells me, but she worked "very, very close" with some of his designers. "He’s always jetting off to Paris...doing a project in Los Angeles and this and that. But we would do, ‘What would Ken do?’ And then Ken would come with a bunch of different ideas, and then we would sort of make decisions around it." She mentions that some of the furniture also came from the San Francisco International Airport’s China Airlines VIP Lounge, which was going through a remodel, as well as another design company that was "downsizing."

"I’m not afraid to ask," Sherri says. "I’m not asking for me, I’m asking for the dogs." One such dog—a tiny, scraggly one—lets out a small bark from a glass-enclosed intake area that we pass by to enter the Zen Room. Its wood-slatted ceilings, origami-style pendant lights, and Zen garden wallpaper play on the theme. (The room is meant to allow dogs to "decompress" upon arriving to the shelter.) I notice an RDL barstool from Andreu World in the corner near a wood-and-rattan dresser and a desk with a small sculpture of a dog meditating.

"We talked about what we wanted it to feel like for the dogs and the people," Sherri continues as we cross the hall to the Glam Shampoochery, where floral dog wallpaper and pale-pink subway tiles punch up an otherwise standard grooming facility.

Across the windy Lombark Street concrete path in the Rescue Center, though, there are noticeably fewer Instagram-y touches. Muttville has a full-time vet staff who work five days a week doing spay/neuter procedures, tumor removals, and dental work, Sherri tells me, to "get dogs really ready for their new beginning." There are a few active procedures happening in the facility, so we only do a quick walk-through, but it’s enough time for one of the vets to bring over a large mason jar filled with discarded dog teeth. "This is four months’ work of teeth...now we’re only saving canines, the huge ones," the vet tells me. When I comment that the teeth look like seashells, the vet replies: "They don’t smell like it."

While I have to imagine that aesthetic touches like Zen garden wallpaper, or, in the Adoption Center, pastel-colored rooms with doorways shaped like houses that nod to San Francisco’s Painted Ladies, seem more for the people than the animals, there are certain areas where it feels clearer how the shelter’s look could also function in the dogs’ favor. From the street, Muttville’s bright-yellow facade with a striped awning and mosaic mural could easily be mistaken for a trendy Brooklyn ceramics studio, if not for its large window with a direct view into the dogs’ open lounging area. It’s meant to draw people in and encourage them stay long enough to potentially make an adoption.

"I do think this is the model for the future," Sherri says, not long before we pass a couch that, she mentions casually, "somebody said was worth about $37,000." When I try to prod about the costs, she says that while all of the shelter’s designer furniture was donated, buying and renovating the building was...expensive. But she adds: "It doesn’t have to be done to this large scale...the idea of making it into someplace that is welcoming to humans, not a scary animal shelter. I don’t want people to get scared away and not do what we’re doing because they think, Oh, well they had a lot of money."

The shelter’s aesthetic in many ways pulls from the book of immersive museums and coffee shops branded for the Instagram generation, the same demographic largely driving skyrocketing pet ownership rates (and, subsequently, new corners of the pet consumer market, from airlines for dogs to senior dog longevity drugs). The point isn’t necessarily creating an upbeat backdrop for a picture, but if an Instagram or TikTok post leads one of Muttville’s dogs to their forever home, that’s a win-win. Muttville team member Patty Stanton tells me the shelter puts a lot of effort into having a fun social media presence; the website also broadcasts a live Wagcam of the dogs every afternoon from the HQ.

"We try and be very hopeful in our messaging," Sherri says. "We don’t have the scared shelter dogs. We don’t go negative. We don’t go Sarah McLachlan."

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