The interior space is expertly designed to accommodate multiple living areas in an open loft. The high-end finishes include zinc cabinet fronts, stainless appliances and maple floors. The Civic Center location is the new hotspot, a result of expanding mid-market construction and revitalization. Ideally situated between Hayes Valley and vibrant Polk Gulch. Moments from Symphony Hall, the Opera House, City Hall, world class restaurants and museums, easy public transportation and near Twitter and Square.

OK, in hindsight there should have been wheels on the ladder.

Steel is the kitchen’s main ingredient, cladding the nearly floor-to-ceiling cabinets, the massive island and even portions of the redwood structural posts. Its rawness fits well with the former early-1900s lithograph-warehouse setting and lends an edge that seems to permeate the entire project.

The original kitchen sat tucked underneath the loft seen on the left here; it was a dark and uneventful space. Bayon and the homeowner brought everything over to the double-height, brick-walled former living room, where large windows bring in lots of natural light. (The living room is now where the kitchen used to be.)

They wanted to get everything on the one wall, so the two brick columns basically were all they had to work with. Tall appliances, like the refrigerator, wine fridge and double stackedovens, took up most of the available space, so the upper cabinet “bridge” storage was left for the pantry and extra dishware. Given the height of the loft, though, the tall cabinets helped cut down visually on the void.

Though the homeowner isn’t an avid cook, he still wanted a working kitchen. In some places it’s just that style trumps function. There are kitchen standards of how far things should be apart, such as the sink in relation to the cooktop, Bayon says.

We broke a lot of rules and tried to find the balance of looking like an art installation but making a functional kitchen.

The homeowner didn’t want solid metal cabinets that would create a clanging racket every time he dropped a piece of silverware into a drawer or shut a cabinet. So Bayon’s firm designed and built wood cabinets, then had another company, Berlin, fabricate steel panels to cover everything.

All the steel still created heavy cabinets, and while earthquakes were an immediate concern, the team didn’t have confidence in the support that the old brick walls offered either. They brought in a structural engineer and decided to use vertical metal bars that connect the cabinets to the ceiling for additional support.

The island houses the sink,dishwasher and a pullout for garbage. There’s also a bank of drawers on one side and an open cubby on another for often-used dishware.
The homeowner had planned to keep the previous small-plank oak floors, but because the crew had to rip everything up to run plumbing to the island anyway, he decided to switch to concrete.

The island is 42 inches deep and acts as the main cutting and prep space. It’s topped with marble that has a warm wood tone.
Shades on magnetic rods can snap into place to conceal the lowest pane of window glass so people on the street can’t look in. Mechanical roller shades up top can close everything off to cut back on glare or create more privacy for the sleeping loft.

Bayon painted the window mullions dark to help focus eyes toward the views.

Pendants: Restoration Hardware; countertop: Fox Marble Silver Brown Wave; faucet: KWC Systema; sink: Julien Summum in Black Granite.

The concrete building was originally built in 1926 as a warehouse for the B.F. Goodrich tire company. Although the building was turned into condos in 1996, it retains metal factory-style windows, exposed ductwork, and concrete walls and pillars.

The homeowners relocated from a larger, more traditional home. Smith chose to celebrate the existing style but reorganize the spaces around a central core. The effect is a doughnut shape where most of the living and entertaining space is in the ring, while the hole, or core, contains office spaces, workout areas, bathrooms, and closets. “We chose to put the rooms that don’t require as much light in the center,” says Smith. “The rooms where people gather, like the kitchen and dining room, are built around that.”

The dining room is framed by two large metal support beams. Calder wouldn’t have it any other way. “I like how they define the space,” he says.

The homeowner says that, in her former residence, she had a set of Chippendale chairs around a dining room table. The chairs didn’t work here, so she and Woodson purchased a set of Chippendale-style chairs and had them lacquered, giving the traditional style a fun update.

Smith chose to do the kitchen cabinets and countertops in a muted shade in order to have the area blend into the open-space plan. “Because it’s so visible, I didn’t want it to stand out as a separate room,” he says.

The media room is outfitted with four swiveling chairs. They can remain stationary for conversation, or turned toward the television or the living room.

The master bedroom shows how two styles can live in harmony. The baroque bed is flanked by two metal nightstands and sits in front of sleek cabinetry.

San Francisco interior designer Ken Fulk is creating buzz and delight, shock and awe, with bold, iconoclastic and witty décor. His loft in San Francisco’s gritty South of Market district offers jolts of color, playful wit and a spirited view of modern design.

It’s the scene of private client consultations—along with bacchanals, chic cocktail parties, sold-out fundraiser dinners for city museums, and scenes of generous and witty hospitality.

“Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative” states the Oscar Wilde quote adorning the front window of Ken Fulk’s South of Market design studio and loft. The quip tells everything you need to know before heading upstairs to meet the witty and design-fearless Fulk, who is currently one of the brightest sparks in San Francisco’s design arena.

“I will never be accused of being boring,” said Fulk, originally from Jefferson country in Virginia. “Design should inspire and make you smile. And it should never be a bore.”

He founded Ken Fulk Design twelve years ago, after testing the waters by designing for handpicked clients. Fulk by-passed design school and a classic apprenticeship with a design firm. He has always stayed under the radar, taking on new clients by referral only. His 20-person firm is currently working on projects from Aspen to Provincetown and from Pacific Heights, to the Dordogne in South-west France.

“My biggest complaint about most rooms I see is that they look too ‘decorator-y’, said the designer. “I tend to shy away from most things ‘designer’. I find it to be chatter that might cloud my instincts. I always want to mix things up and relish the imperfection. Even impromptu has to feel definitive. It sounds easy, but it’s not.”

Take a right turn on a deserted street in a hidden corner of SoMa, and the handsome brick building that houses Ken Fulk’s design studio and loft hovers into view. With its grand arched windows, sculpted escutcheons, and elegant demeanor, the four-story edifice is more Grand Canal than industrial warehouse. It was this Quattrocento-style fantasy that inspired Fulk to acquire the building five years ago.

“I always wanted to live above the shop, though this loft is admittedly a bit more Bruce Wayne than corner grocer,” Fulk said. The warehouse includes his loft and a roof deck on the top floor, and Fulk’s design studio on the third floor. On the first two levels he warehouses an ever-expanding inventory of furniture and accessories he uses in design projects.

The building, built in the 1920’s, has a Moorish/Venetian exterior but the interior when Fulk acquired it was pure warehouse, with brick walls and worn fir floors.

“From the moment I walked in the door, I knew I was going to buy the building,” said Fulk. “I saw the old spiral staircase and the soaring 16-foot ceilings, and there was no turning back. I left the meeting and wrote an offer. Three weeks later I owned it.”

Fulk shares the loft with his partner of 20 years, Kurt Wootton, an accomplished pianist.

When they purchased the building, the interior brick walls had been sandblasted, most interior walls removed, and the old fir floors sanded.

“Basically it was a perfect shell. It took on an almost spiritual quality. It was this purity that moved me,” said the designer. “My motto in undertaking the project was ‘don’t screw it up’. I did not want to lose the feeling and character that so moved me about the space.”

Fulk and his team added all-new systems to the entire 14,000 sq. ft of the building, new plumbing, electric, HVAC but keeping them simple and industrial in appearance and leaving most systems exposed.

“For the loft I wanted to resist the trend to condo-ize the space by cutting it up into a traditional series of rooms,” said Fulk. “ I literally banished walls and doors with few exceptions.”

Fulk, a passionate and knowledgeable collector, had only to take a trip to Paris to check in with his favorite French antiques dealer, Stephane Olivier to find an 18th century portrait of a dandy for the bathroom, a 10-foot square industrial steel table for the living room, as well as gilded chairs and a series of vitrines for the bedroom and dressing room.

I wanted the space to function as a huge grand salon with quiet moments throughout,” said Fulk “Despite my love of color I resisted the urge and kept all of the walls white.”

Furnishings provide the bling. Against a graphic backdrop of black and white (zebra prints, houndstooth and Greek key patterns) colors pop. Two super-size Edward Wormley tufted sofas were covered in sapphire blue velvet. A vintage Robsjohn-Gibbings dining table top was recreated in reverse- painted glass in vivid Hermes orange. A pair of giant wing chairs is covered in an iridescent purple fabric from Etro.

“I have always felt very self-confident about design, “ said Fulk. “I was never afraid to learn, but afraid to be taught in a conventional sense. I feared I might lose something in the translation. Like a singer afraid to take voice lessons, I was scared that an innate gift might be lost.”

So he toys with scale. His 15-foot tall draped four-posted bed towering over the dressing room and adjacent bathroom, and an Hermes-orange dining table shimmering beside the industrial marble-topped counter in the kitchen.

To avoid other walls he designed the headboard of the bed to obscure the closets hidden on the other side. The shower floats in the space and encloses the bathroom.

“I take things of great disparity—spaces, furnishings, art, accessories—and find a way for them to live in harmony or at least live together in an off-hand way,” said the designer.

With bare windows on four sides of the loft—and the gilded dome of a Ukrainian Orthodox church looming outside the living room—the loft is consistently engaging.

He experiences the full spectrum of the day, with sunrise over the city; sunset behind Twin Peaks, and all-day light playing off the spectral Federal Building just blocks away.

“With all of the skylights we are never in the dark,” said Fulk, still entranced. “The full moon traces it’s way across the room, so bright I can almost read in bed by it. Waking up just as the sun is about to rise is magical. The space is cathedral like at that moment. In the meantime, his design studio is becoming the think tank he hoped for.

“I work with incredibly talented people who challenge and support one another to do better and better work,” said Fulk.

And the loft has become the grand salon he hoped for. He and his team have countless dinners, fund-raisers, birthday parties, a masked ball or two, a dinner for Jean-Paul Gaultier, piano recitals, movie nights and even more fundraisers.

“Now I am essentially looking for any excuse to throw a party.”

FULK’S FOLLY 

“I needed some way to shut the living space off from the studio down below connected by the industrial steel spiral staircase. My first instinct was a glass-walled enclosure, a sort of poor man’s Louvre entrance. However that turned out to be a rich man’s concept. Instead I settled for a floating library. Essentially it is a sky lit conservatory at the top of the stairs. It is an ideal spot to house my growing book and sculpture collection. The steel and glass doors to the library were salvaged from the Napa State Mental Hospital.”

                 

When it comes to life decisions, Clive McCarthy doesn’t shy away from grand leaps. The British-born electrical engineer was near the peak of a long career in Silicon Valley, where he directed chip and software design for the semiconductor company Altera, when he went in an entirely new direction.

In 1997, around the time he turned 51, he took a few years off and then enrolled in art school. Then he began staging public performances with live avant-garde music and teams of painters who executed the large images he envisioned, and later he started devising art-producing algorithms, using TVs and computer monitors as dynamic “canvases” for his work.

He also began dating Tricia Bell, a physician. In 2005, four months into their courtship, Mr. McCarthy showed her blueprints for his future home and studio in the San Francisco’s Mission district. When Dr. Bell, now 59, asked about a space labeled “Tricia’s Room,” he explained, “It’s a room you can transform however you please.” And if she ever became peeved with him, he told her, “it can be your little retreat.”

It was a bold move so early in their relationship. But, he recalled, “I was already certain how I felt about Tricia, and I needed to make my intentions known.”

Dr. Bell, who is now his wife, was charmed.

The gritty fringe neighborhood where he had bought a 10,000-square-foot structure wasn’t where he had first planned to settle, but his efforts to build a contemporary home on upscale Russian Hill had met opposition. So when he unexpectedly found this 1925 concrete building amid auto body shops, he took the leap, buying it for $2.3 million.

Originally a Lucky Strike cigarette warehouse, it had also been the home of Capp Street Project, an organization known for its experimental art installations in the basilica-like main hall, a vast concrete room rising 24 feet to a pitched skylighted roof. Ann Hamilton once blanketed the floor there with 750,000 honey-dipped pennies, Bill Viola installed an indoor redwood forest and Carl Cheng flooded the room like a swimming pool.

The next owner had carved up the space, though, so Mr. McCarthy was unaware of the building’s art world provenance. But Stanley Saitowitz, the designer he hired to renovate it, remembered the warehouse from its Capp Street days and set about reclaiming it as a place for making art.

“Clive gave us a pretty open canvas,” Mr. Saitowitz said. “We wanted to create emptiness: a playground for his experiments, for all the different things he works on simultaneously.” The idea was to restore the openness and rawness of the space by peeling away dropped ceilings, paneling and partitions, and then to insert into that rough setting “little jewels or set pieces,” he said, meaning discrete rooms or objects with greater refinement and intimacy.

Now, where redwoods once soared, a spiral stairway encased in steel rods rises to a roof garden. Mr. McCarthy’s studio takes center stage in the big central space, where his “Electric Paintings” morph and regenerate on skeletal screens. One level up, on the original perimeter mezzanine, Mr. Saitowitz created pockets of domesticity, like a huge master bath lined in pristine white tile with a rain feature. In the open kitchen, a 39-foot silvery granite work island doubles as a dining table.

Dr. Bell said she has never needed to retreat, peeved, into “Tricia’s Room,” but she has transformed it with a green wall like the one in the bedroom that recalls Mr. Viola’s redwoods.

Meanwhile, the creative spirit of the building’s earlier days has spontaneously seeped back. Artist friends gather for group critiques, and when the couple invites avant-garde ensembles to rehearse or perform, the whole place resonates with music.

The two-story, 20,000-square-foot home was originally asking $70 million in 2008 by Victor MacFarlane, a real-estate investment manager and developer who bought three apartment shells and combined them. He sold it back to the bank in a deed-in-lieu of foreclosure after it failed to sell after several price cuts. It began showing in September at 50% off and sold in a multiple-bid situation, said listing broker Gregg Lynn of Sotheby’s International Realty of San Francisco, who shared the listing with his colleagues Louis Silcox and Bernadette Lamothe.

An entrance foyer with a two-story waterfall feature greets visitors to the six-bedroom, 12-bath apartment. The living room has 22-foot ceilings and the 2,500-square-foot master suite has a gym, sauna and steam room and 3,000 square feet of terraces. The apartment also has four fireplaces, a library and a home theater. The seller is Second Step Asset Management, a subsidiary of Bank of America.

Broker Katy Dinner, who sold a penthouse condo at the Millennium Tower to venture capitalist Tom Perkins in 2009 for $9.4 million, calls the sales price too high on a price-per-square-foot basis, but adds that finding that amount of space, with panoramic views, is difficult. “What they’re paying for is the square footage and views,” she says. “Twenty-thousand square feet is a lot of square footage in San Francisco.” Mr. Lynn calls the deal “a great value,” adding that he believes more than $56 million has been spent creating the unit.

The couple began to buy all sorts of things such as creations of local graffiti artist Barry McGee or Shepard Fairey, JR and Os Gemeos. They reached a moment when they had collected over 120 pieces and at that time the couple realized they would need a bigger home if they wanted to keep doing that. They moved into this lovely loft that offers them the perfect interior structure. Wardell’s office has a rectangular that the couple calls the “dinner’s ready slot”.

In 2007 the couple decided to purchase a 3,200-square- foot former Chinese laundry and tooth-powder factory. It had a very large and column-free interior that allowed them to divide the space as they wanted. They also decided to create several cozy rooms. They placed the master bedroom at the back, away from the street. They also wanted to maximize the daylight and to have plenty of space to showcase the art they have collected. In the end it all turned out great. It’s an unconventional home but the owners are unique as well. It’s like the house resembles its owners.

Rebuilt in 2008-2010 with great attention to detail, the finest materials, and state of the art technology. Enter the corner light filled unit through the towering entrance door and walk down the corridor to the open-plan interconnected living area, kitchen, dining and office/work area. Soaring wooden beams, brick and glass walls, and floor to ceiling windows add to the ambience of the space.

Just steps to downtown, nestled between the restaurants of the Embarcadero and AT&T ballpark, this loft is ideally located on the ground floor with secure access from both Bryant and 2nd streets.

You can even buy it from a sum of 1.3 million US dollars…

     

The classically laid-out floor plan features three bedrooms, indoor water feature with three baths, a powder room, library, two fireplaces, a formal dining room, gourmet kitchen, laundry room, sunroom, Solarium and two terraces (one terrace with antique fountain too). The richly decorated interior shows great craftsmanship and design, antique chandeliers (together with a few modern ones too) and sconces, antique parquet and lots of modern pieces of furniture.

It is listed for sale here, for a cost of $5,800,000.

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The client’s lifestyle is utilitarian, blending professional, technology-based investigations with domestic functions. The design draws heavily on the client’s desire for a space exuding a practical, modern simplicity, and was influenced by his aesthetic sensitivities and emphasis on the adaptability, prefabrication and modularity of the project components. Functional insertions into the existing concrete shell created an efficient, adaptable “armature” for his evolving needs and lifestyle. In this respect, the space is a residential laboratory.