Renovating A Pied-À-Terre In A Midcentury San Francisco Building

Whenever architect Andrew Mann and interior designers Kristin Rowell and Bailey Peters hit a roadblock with their Nob Hill project, they asked themselves: What would James Bond do? For Mann, the flat’s location in San Francisco also recalled Dashiell Hammett’s noir mysteries set in the city. While these two points of reference guided the overall aesthetic, all decisions were ultimately in service to the home’s star: the views, which encompass Huntington Park, Grace Cathedral, the Bay Bridge and the San Francisco Bay.

Mann, Rowell and Peters had all previously worked with the client, and this time around, the real estate developer tapped the team to renovate a pied-à-terre that occupies an entire floor of a midcentury building. First and foremost, a solid wall that separated the kitchen from the living and dining areas had to go. In its place, Mann conceived a wall of windows. “It’s a way of creating transparency and openness between the two spaces,” he explains. Its blackened steel now connects to the building’s existing steel window system that, on the inside, had been painted white. Once the steel was stripped of layers of paint, a specialist blued the metal to make it black again. “At night, the black disappears,” Mann observes. “You’re focused on what you see outside, without the distraction of looking through white mullions.”

Rowell notes that the “subtlety of the palette and materials” further foregrounds the views. Blue and gray tones permeate the flat, with textiles that evoke men’s suiting, such as the settee upholstered in a marled gray fabric. The living room is anchored by a custom Vladimir Kagan sofa with a graceful arc—the perfect perch for enjoying the view, watching television or gathering during a party.

In the kitchen and bathroom, small windows with multiple panes or louvers were replaced by windows with a single pane. “It was like turning on a television channel of the incredible beauty of the area,” says the client of the resultant unobstructed outlook. Adds Rowell, “When the sun is setting and the lights are coming on in the city, it’s pretty magical.”