Silicon valley magazine 2017

ST Y L E & DESIGN profile

The 2017 San Francisco Decorator Showcase (decoratorshowcase.org) features a stunning Classical Revival mansion in Pacific Heights. More than two dozen interior and landscape designers were tasked with transforming the 11,000-square-foot abode, including several Peninsula firms highlighted here, that are participating in the Showcase for the first time.

The house is open through May 29 (tickets $35 to $40), with proceeds benefiting the San Francisco University High School financial aid program.

By Anh-Minh Le

SHOWCASE DESIGN Hoffman created a curio closet off the second-floor landing, adjacent to the master suite. “It’s a retreat within a retreat, a home for cherished objects gathered from a lifetime of travel,” she says. “The space is a bit sultry and moody, perfect for winding down with a nightcap or waking up with a morning cup of coffee, surrounded by favorite memories.” For the jewel box of a space, Hoffman chose locally sourced materials to complement the featured objects—for example, pewter and black handblocked wallpaper from Paper Mills in Oakland and perforated brass sconces from Sausalito-based Robert Long Lighting.

ELSEWHERE This spring, Hoffman is completing the full remodel of a Portola Valley single-story ranch and will soon start work on a midcentury abode in Hillsborough. Lately, she’s also been spending time in Todo Santos— “the best beach town in Mexico,” she notes—for a client’s second home.

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PHOTO BY BRAD KNIPSTEIN; STYLING BY ROSY STRAZZERI-FRIDMAN

SHOWING OFF

Krista Hoffman Design

With parents who were both antique collectors, Krista Hoffman was drawn to design from a young age. But it wasn’t until she hired an interior designer for her own home that she considered it as a career. “Watching her sketch, lay out and plan sparked something in me, and I immediately enrolled in design school,” she recalls. In 2012, she launched her Menlo Park-based practice (kristahoffman.com). A native of Ann Arbor, Mich., designing in Silicon Valley has taught her to treat outdoor spaces as bonus rooms, she says, worthy of the same attention as the interiors.

Kari McIntosh Design

Kari McIntosh has lived all over California—growing up in Bakersfield, attending college at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo and landing in San Francisco for 16 years before moving to San Mateo two years ago. With the intention of transitioning from a corporate job in event planning and design to hospitality design, she enrolled in UC Berkeley’s Interior Design and Interior Architecture extension program. After starting her firm (karimcintoshdesign.com) in 2008, she pivoted to residential design. “I enjoy the personal connection with homeowners and the pace of the projects,” she explains. “Residential is more customized, allowing for personal touches.”

In a home in San Francisco’s Russian Hill neighborhood, McIntosh mated traditional architecture with modern elements like white Panton chairs and a chandelier composed of glass globes.

SHOWCASE DESIGN “Nestled between the master bedroom

and bath, The Balancing Point is an elegant escape where the woman of the house can coordinate business and family logistics in style,” says McIntosh. The space, “where creativity and productivity can flow,” is appointed with St. Frank’s Indigo Dots wallpaper, a fabric-wrapped chandelier that is a collaboration between Bolt Textiles and artist Llane Alexis, and ceramics by Torryne Choate.

ELSEWHERE In Hillsborough, McIntosh is tackling a bathroom and kitchen remodel in a traditional ranch for “an energetic family of six,” she says. She also has a bathroom and kitchen project underway in a modern farmhouse in Redwood City. Further afield, in Santa Barbara, McIntosh is focusing on the bathrooms and kitchen in a dwelling she describes as an “urban farmhouse with a nautical twist.”

KARI MCINTOSH PHOTO BY JULIE MIKOS PHOTOGRAPHY; ZETERRE PHOTO BY MARION BRENNER

A Los Gatos garden, an ongoing creative journey for Baumann, currently includes 400-plus rare species of plants. A water feature is part of an undulating steel retaining wall.

Zeterre Landscape Architecture

“My first ‘studio’ was my childhood garden on an 800-acre historic ranch, my own secret garden,” says Jarrod Baumann, who grew up in the foothills of Yosemite. By the time he left for Cal Poly Pomona, he had a collection of over 200 plants, most of them rare, and friends and neighbors had begun enlisting him to design their gardens. He went on to launch Zeterre (zeterre.com) in 2006, and now has offices in San Francisco and Menlo Park. “In Silicon Valley,” Baumann observes, “we have some of the most brilliant minds in the world. We love designing for people who have achieved great success by thinking outside the box—and they expect us to do the same.”

SHOWCASE DESIGN “I have been thinking about a very

special home that I love in Paris and have incorporated some ideas from that,” says Baumann of his inspiration. Original Zeterre-designed furniture, along with sculptures by Matt Devine—“abstract birds flying in the garden,” as Baumann puts it— greet visitors to the Showcase, where the front yard is Zeterre’s domain.

ELSEWHERE At any given time, Zeterre has about 30 projects in the works. The firm recently finished a Japanese garden in Palo Alto with “many very special touches that are truly extraordinary,” says Baumann. “We have a fantastic moon gate in front that stops traffic. And we brought in a Japanese maple that is 14 feet in diameter and was trained by an Oregon arborist to lay flat and hover just a foot off the ground. It’s breathtaking and our clients love it.”

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