At Home with EHDD

Fresh out of an East Coast architecture school, I was fortunate enough to find work with the San Francisco architect William Turnbull, who along with Joe Esherick and others, were founders and heirs of the “Bay Area style” of modern architecture. Bill Turnbull was equally at home designing houses or working in his vineyards, and from him I learned just as much about grape growing and farming, as I did about the character of a site and designing a home.

I learned many things from many people in over twenty years of architectural practice, but it was Bill who would remind you to smell the eucalyptus and the redwood, and look to see where the sun, fog, light and wind came from—all the things that the farmer was constantly attuned to. These characteristics of place and site were, by and large, the same things that the architect and client should discover before ever picking up the pencil and sketch paper.

Oceanside Retreat in Sea Ranch, CA

I’m pretty sure that Joe Esherick would have agreed with this approach. His remarkable body of residential work – from the modest little hedgerow houses at Sea Ranch to the exquisitely-sited McLeod Residence in Belvedere – share an intimate connection to their site, a sensitivity to climate, graceful proportions, balanced light, and elegant detailing. These qualities reflect how attuned he was to nature, helped him define a way of living unique to the West, specifically Northern California, and cemented his legacy.


My upbringing was torn from the pages of Sunset magazine so I am all about “Western Living,” and that has no doubt crept its way into how I view, and more importantly, how I practice architecture. I was born in Hawaii (a Quonset hut on the Navy base!), but I grew up in the Bay Area, experiencing first-hand it’s plethora of what has become iconic architecture: a 1950’s Ranch-burger in the South Bay; a William Wurster-designed beach house rented for summer vacations; mid-century Eichlers where friends lived; and an Esherick hedgerow house at Sea Ranch where Thanksgiving was spent with friends.



McLeod Residence in Belvedere, CA

In 1998, my wife and I bought a working-man’s Victorian in San Francisco’s Mission District, built in 1885 (a fixer-upper, to say the least). Our modest little house is now 125 years old, and we are most likely the fifth or sixth generation to sit and warm ourselves around the fireplace, to share a meal with family and friends in the dining room, to work in the sunny garden on a glorious August afternoon—to live in this house that is our home. I tell my son that while this technically our house, we are essentially just borrowing it for a while, and while we are here we should take good care of it so the next family can enjoy it, too.

This sense of stewardship for home, community, and the land is a strong trait with most architects, and at EHDD it is part of the firm’s DNA. My own path through various architectural offices in different parts of San Francisco always seemed to bring me closer to my house and shortened my commute with each change. Sitting here now on the corner of 18th and Folsom streets, it seems that maybe it was inevitable that I would someday end up here, four and a half blocks from my house, and at home with EHDD.

- Kevin Killen, AIA, LEED AP
Director, Residential Studio

Images:
The McLeod Residence, photo by Roy Flam
Oceanside Retreat, photo by Jim Alinder