Trend Watch: Architectural Netting

The white cedar board paneling in the interiors mimics the exterior; the ones inside are bleached for a lighter finish. Fixed glass picture windows are by Town & Country Glass. Unalam and JIG Design Build fabricated the staircase with ash risers on a single stringer, a Gray Organschi hallmark.

The bathroom picks up on the circular form of the home’s cylindrical stair and the “water mirror” on the roof.

Another view of Manon van der Zwaal’s home shows the living area overlooking the canal.

Resident Manon van der Zwaal’s home exemplifies the open design and natural materials common to all 30 structures.

The Metal Clad windows are by Loewen.

A butterfly stool by Sori Yanagi for Vitra sits in front of the triangular light well that opens into the basement.

"The whole act of going up and down a stair is a very spatial experience," Gray says. "When you’re bridging between two levels, you try to do it in as structurally light way as possible, which is really appealing to us."

The home is a celebration of simple functionality and honest materiality—from the netting used to enclose the reading snug on the mezzanine level, to the timber cladding. “There is no paint or render on the build as we wanted to express the beauty of the materials themselves wherever possible,” explains architect William Samuels.

“When the house was almost done, we sat with a pizza until ten at night, just watching the color change, and we ended up loving how dynamic it is,” says Doug.

Blue has a major moment in the house that Luke Ogrydziak and Zoë Prillinger designed for a couple moving from Marin County to Telegraph Hill. The color is a custom blend by Benjamin Moore that the architects named Lorna Blue for one of the homeowners, an artist.