Mock/Wallace has just completed the Design Development Phase of the renovation of the UA Homes SRO in Berkeley.  We prepared this animation walk-through to help our clients visualize how the design will appear.  Although "rough" it gives a remarkable sense of being in the building. 

This San Francisco Victorian dates from the 1880's and has been restored  with Victorian detailing in the formal spaces and with contemporary fixtures and detailing in the bathrooms and kitchens.  Where original details were missing, authentic pieces were recreated. 

Click here to see more photos of the interiors and garden.

Lincoln Avenue, the mainstreet of Calistoga in the Napa Valley, still retains the small town feeling where people live and work.  Small shops with 3 hour free parking line the streets leading to the spa resorts with natural hot springs.  This handsome weathered storefront features cast iron columns.  They are a reminder of the first explosion of possibilities of the dawning industrial age in the 19th Century that continues to this day.  Change is constant.

710 Ellis Street is in the heart of the rundown Tenderloin Distrist, an area of San Francisco with many long neglected inexpensive residential hotels.  That wasn't the case when these buildings were built.  The entrance to this building is embelished with a carved granite surround featuring a classical Greek acanthus leaf motif. At first I thought it might be glazed tile, but it was actually granite.  There are many undiscovered treasures right in plain site. 

Coffered ceilings refer to ceilings with recessed panels - sometimes just decorative or sometimes revealing the structure of the ceiling beams. The photo above shows the "grand" staircase at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco with a hexagonal barrel vaulted coffered ceiling. Adding lights, vents, and other items add another layer of complexity for the architectural team to coordinate. It's a good idea to have a "reflected" ceiling plan to show just how all these different elements go together.  Notice the lights in the ceiling are centered exactly in the center of the hexagonal panel.

Coffered ceilings date back at least 2,000 years.  The Roman Parthenon is an early surviving  example.  Here the recessed panels shave the weight of the roof structure in an elegant way.

  

It's too bad these hinges are designed to be hidden as they are truly beautiful and you only see them when the door is open. This hinge is needed when you want to detail a "concealed" door with no frame or other hardware exposed.

These hinges are manufactured in Japan by Sugatsune. Sugatsune manufactures many specialty hard-to-find beautiful items you won't find at your local big box building supply store. Check out their website here.

We used these hinges on a "concealed" door in our project on Telegraph Hill in San Francisco.  See it here.

Acuity OLED lights were awarded the most innovative product of the year at Lightfair International 2011 in Atlanta.  There was a mini Lightfair show at PG&E in San Francisco recently and I got a chance to look a the award winning light fixture and hear a lecture from the developer Peter Ngai.  See a video here.   

OLEDs are different from LED lights just now coming into use.  LEDs are replacing fluorescent lights, which in turn were replacing inefficient incandescent bulbs.  The problem with fluorescent light bulbs are their toxic materials and  landfill issues.  LED lights are made of inorganic materials while OLEDs are made of organic materials.  Organic LED or OLEDs are microscopic thin layers of organic materials that glow when given an electric charge.  The "bulb" is a thin layer of material and "bulb", the housing, and the lens fixture are all now merged into one element.  The product is just coming on the market now and Peter Ngai anticipates increasing efficiencies in OLEDs that will make it competitive with LEDs and other lighting products.  The big plus with OLEDs will be energy efficiency, efficient use of materials, and no disposal of toxic materials.  LM