Located in St. Helena, a 2600 s.f. private residence replaces a dilapidating structure nestled in an active grapefield. As a nod to the farm structures and agricultural character of the surrounding area, an alumimum-clad modernized barn will occupy the site with its simple but iconic form. The thin footprint and orientation takes advantage of prevailing winds with large windows for natural ventilation. In keeping with the simplicity of the exterior, the interiors are spare and refined featuring a dramatic double-height open area.
Relevant Project Experience
Private Residence, San Francisco, CA
Client: Confidential
Design: Richard Tsai Design
Design Team: Richard Tsai
Status: Completion 2020
Located in Noe Valley, the project converts a 1300 s.f. Victorian era cottage into 5000 s.f. home. The primary architectural gesture is the intersection of two volumes defined by a historic facade and a minimal box in the rear, expressed by contrasting blackened Shousugi-ban siding with white stucco and glass. The interior is kept spare and warm with large expanses of wood covering the floors, walls, and ceilings. Typical strategies for sustainability are employed e.g. low-e glass, solar panels, radiant heat, green roofs.
Model
Existing Facade
Relevant Project Experience
Janus et Cie Milan Showroom
Client: Janus et Cie
Design: Vanderbyl Design
Design Team: Richard Tsai
Status: Built November 2017
Vanderbyl Design designed Janus et Cie’s Milan showroom. As the it’s first showroom in Europe, it is located on Via Fatebenefratelli in Crera, the heart of the city’s fashion and design district. The multilevel showroom shows the brand’s trademark design language: airy interiors with lacquered white finishes and limestone flooring and walls. Tall topiary walls and stout chair displays punctuate the interior as objects of focus.
Exterior facade
Relevant Project Experience
Innovant Neocon Chicago
Client: Innovant
Design: Vanderbyl Design
Design Team: Richard Tsai
Status: Built June 2018
Innovant, a contract furniture manufacturer approached Vanderbyl Design to design their new showroom at the Chicago Mart to increase the company’s visibility and further their market reach with the architecture and design community. On a limited budget and construction time window, the design streamlines the existing space, simplifying and clarifying the program into two zones of occupation. The showroom space is divided in half with an existing soffit extended to become a volumetric presence and housing a new material display, offices, storage, and breakroom. The other half is the main exhibit area showcasing the latest offerings in the Innovant furniture line. The exhibit space itself is divided by ephemeral scenic curtain backdrops of iconic architecture. Additionally, the use of mirrored walls simulate the effect of their furniture systems as a repeated object in a typical office setting while visually expanding the small footprint of the showroom.
Storefront
Existing showroom
Relevant Project Experience
Teknion Dallas Showroom Update
Client: Teknion
Design: Vanderbyl Design
Design Team: Richard Tsai
Status: Completion May 2017
In updating the Teknion’s showroom in Dallas, Texas, Vanderbyl Design designed metal screen walls to divide the open floor plan into discrete but porous areas that can accommodate different furniture collections and zones of occupation. Conference rooms and floors were also updated to create a uniform, clean and minimal interior.
The metal screen motif was designed to resemble grain lines in wood as a gesture towards the programmatic requirements of WELL certification and the incorporation of biophilic elements in the showroom.
Relevant Project Experience
Teknion Toronto Hub Expansion
Client: Teknion
Design: Vanderbyl Design
Design Team: Richard Tsai
Status: Completion November 2018
Acquiring an additional 6600 s.f. of space for Teknion’s Toronto showroom, Teknion tasked Vanderbyl Design with designing an expansion of the showroom that would embrace current trends in workstyles while hewing close to its branding language. From private training and impromptu hack sessions to lectures and large catered public events, Vanderbyl conceived of the new space as a blank canvas that could accommodate a flexible program, using lighting as a motif to define different zones of occupation and connection. Frameless sliding glass partitions with writable glass also define the space, expanding or contracting as needed to meet the changing nature of the new workplace.
Relevant Project Experience
Teknion Neocon Chicago 2018 Edition
Client: Teknion
Design: Vanderbyl Design
Design Team: Richard Tsai
Status: Completed June 2018
Neocon, the annual furniture convention in Chicago, is the preeminent showcase event for contract furnishing companies in North America. Vanderbyl Design’s design for Neocon 2018 consisted of creating three nested case study spaces in Teknion’s showroom, each modeling imagined companies at different stages in their evolution: startup, maturing startup, and mature. Each space is differentiated by tonal changes in material and color as well as successively more refined detailing. Showcasing Teknion’s furniture within each case study area demonstrates the adaptability of Teknion’s furniture lines to fit comfortably within each context.
Relevant Project Experience
Teknion Neocon Chicago 2019 Edition
Client: Teknion
Design: Vanderbyl Design
Design Team: Richard Tsai
Status: Completed June 2019
For the 2019 edition of Neocon, Vanderbyl Design modified the showroom for the rollout of new furniture and interior architecture offerings. The concept draws on the Light and Space art movement and plays with the visual perception of the space. Repeated black frames create the sense of planar abstraction detmaterializing the column structure while volumetrically defining the spaces contained within and without. New Teknion wall products are incorporated into this scheme as infinitely thin planar elements further defining the space to highlight new desking systems, soft seating, tables, and work chairs.
Mural wall graphic by John Hersey and built interior perspective
Relevant Project Experience
Teknion Showroom NYC
Client: Teknion
Design: Vanderbyl Design
Design Team: Richard Tsai
Status: Built December 2017
Teknion, a major contract furniture manufacturer tasked Vanderbyl Design with redesigning their NYC showroom, updating the space to reflect current trends in workplace environments and workstyles. The space was designed with clean minimal lines using three modular pavilions to contain communal functions while tall blade-like screens dramatically divide the remaining space into more discrete exhibit areas for the company’s different furniture lines.
Relevant Project Experience
Media Arts Center, Saint Louis, MO
Client: Internal Development
Located in the heart of St. Louis, MO arts district, the media arts center fills a void along a major arterial, nearby landmark buildings such as the renowned Fox Theater and Masonic Arts Building. Whereas the primary activities of such buildings are on the interior, the media arts center thrusts activity to the exterior via the creation of an urban plaza activated by an outdoor theater. The contents of the interior spill out via a long “stoa” framing the plaza, featuring a subtle torquing roof as its primary architectural gesture. A tall slender tower containing galleries and media library occupies the other edge of the site providing a necessary cap dividing the site to describe two different densities of occupation.
Exterior perspective rendering
3D wireframe Rhino model
Relevant Project Experience
Alternative Homeless Housing
Client: Internal Development
Presented at the 2018 SF Public Press symposium on homelessness in San Francisco. With the homeless crisis reaching catastrophic levels in the city of San Francisco and other cities across the US, an alternative housing concept was developed to circumvent the need for available land that more conventional housing developments would otherwise require. Using shipping containers as the platform to create “microblocks” on available metered parking spaces, the concept capitalizes on the modular and mobile nature of the shipping container to distribute a temporary housing solution across the city.
Relevant Project Experience
Park Pavilion
Client: Internal Development
The project was developed to explore algorithmic / computational design methods for generating architecture.
Sited amongst a stand of trees in a park, the pavilion structure itself is conceived as an agglomeration of trees bundled together, nature reordered as a dome-like canopy comprised of edge-joined timber. The structural members are staggered in position creating hollows in the dome structure to reduce weight while also allowing for light filtration.
Interior Perspective
Relevant Project Experience
Reading Room / Lounge
Client: Internal Development
The project was developed to explore algorithmic / computational design methods for generating architecture. The concept for an urban reading room / lounge embeds various aspects of program: book / media display and storage, daylighting, acoustic / noise control into the logic of the primary structural system and design. The shelving components serve as shear panels in the structure but also as light filter / shading elements rotating on axis as it rises in elevation to create a clerestory or shading condition as necessary. The fabric-wrapped structural fins comprising the ceiling act as acoustic baffling reducing large surface areas for sound reflection and reverberation creating a quiet, intimate space for reading and study.
Roof structure development sequence
Detail section of shear panel shelves
Isolated shear panel shelves array
Wireframe of combined shear panel system with structural fins
