Going Japanese
An East Bay builder combines her love of Japanese
design with her
modern sensibilities to create the home she’s always dreamed
of
Japanese temple meets urban loft. That’s one way to describe
the Oakland Hills home designed and built by Sallie Bliss Lang.
Hovering over a canyon, with drop-dead views of San Francisco
Bay, the city’s majestic downtown skyline, and Marin County’s
headlands, the house is a tribute to Lang’s love of Japanese
design and has more than a smattering of her modern sensibilities.
The opportunity to build her ideal home arrived when Lang and
a group of friends, who had
formed an investment collective, came upon this hillside property.
The five of them bought the
land, designating Lang as the home’s designer and builder.
(The completed home has since been
purchased by a prominent California politician.)
That was the easy part. Engineering a house on a 37-degree
slope was the challenge. “To
design a home on a lot that’s so steep, and to make it
pleasant to live in, I knew that was going to
be hard,” says Lang, who lives and works in Oakland.
Plus she didn’t want just any home. She
specifically wanted one that espoused the Japanese aesthetics—simplicity,
profundity, attention
to detail, austere beauty—she’d become enamored
with.
Lang’s interest in Japanese building and design
comes partly from her work with
master builder Paul Discoe, founder of Joinery Structures,
who studied Buddhist temple
design and construction in Japan. Discoe had hired her to help
build Larry Ellison’s
immense Japanese-inspired compound in Woodside, which includes
a traditional teahouse. “I
integrated a lot of what I learned from Paul into my own process,” Lang
says.
For this home, though, she decided to put a spin on traditional
Japanese design. “The idea was to create a hybrid,” Lang
says. “Traditional Japanese houses are tough for Americans
to live
in, because they’re delicate, so this house is kind of
in between. It’s got the aesthetic—the light,
warmth, and clean lines of Japanese homes—but it’s
still user-friendly and very hearty.”
Lang used wood—Forest Stewardship Council certified,
recycled, or locally harvested—
throughout the home. The choice of material was in line with
the Eastern aesthetic and also
softened her modernist components. “I love modern design,
but I’m turned off by coldness and
what feels to me as the overindustrial feel of it, so the wood
was an attempt to warm it up,” she
says. A built-in bench adorns the entryway; the wood from the
fireplace mantle in the living
room came from a felled elm recovered after a 1995 storm in
San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park;
the wood for door and window trim was sourced at Live Edge,
a milling company that reuses
salvaged trees.
Lang had the frame built in a prefab shop in Canada and, after
the remaining infrastructure
was in place, had it shipped and assembled. “It’s
a very efficient way to build,” she says. “But
it’s
also harder. You have to be exact in your planning, but if
you do it right and you’re meticulous,
it goes together really nicely. There was barely a detail that
was not worked out beforehand, so
the frame went up in six weeks.”
Like the Japanese builders of her inspiration, Lang took painstaking
care with every detail
of construction, so it’s no surprise that the home took
three years to come to fruition, from the
time of the purchase of the property to the application of
the final coat of paint last November.
The house has three bedrooms and four baths, and spans some
4,200 square feet over five levels
(including the street-level garage).
From the road, the only indication of what’s inside is
the Japanese-style gate. Once you
approach the front entrance down a set of stairs, a hefty Asian-inspired
sliding door with horizontal
mahogany slats sets the stage. This second level offers the
entryway, an office, and a
guest bath. Above the door and throughout other parts of the
house, the wooden grid ceiling is
just one of many nods to master temple builders. Even the security
keypad is hidden inside an
elegant wood-framed box.
A spacious wooden staircase brings you down to the main floor,
which comprises two guest
bedrooms and a great room—the living room, dining room,
and kitchen—topped by a soaring
open-beam wood cathedral ceiling. The views out the many windows
steal the show, but the
eye is also drawn to Lang’s numerous graceful details:
a soapstone kitchen counter, open corner
shelving, and textured glass cabinet doors. An electronics
closet hides remote control gadgets
and avoids cluttering the clean lines of the room; a dumbwaiter
travels between floors.
A luxurious master bedroom takes up the entire fourth level.
From the bedroom, you look
out over the Marin Headlands—unless you prefer to gaze
at the flames in the remote-controlled
fireplace. Two huge walk-in closets and a walled-off lounging
area keep the bedroom a serene
retreat. The bathroom is all understated glam. The counter
and sink are made of limestone,
glass tiles evoke the shape of bamboo trees, towel racks are
radiant heated, and a steam shower
offers multiple showerheads that cascade water from every conceivable
angle.
Descending one last time you reach what Lang calls the “spa
level.” Here the house makes
the transition from Japanese tradition to urban loft. Eschewing
traditional sliding glass doors to
the wooden deck, Lang used two glass-paneled garage doors.
An adjoining sauna has its own
entrance. There’s also a river rock–lined shower
and a small kitchenette. The perfect blend of
Japanese aesthetics and modern convenience.
|
