Common Ground: A Chinese-Style Family Compound in California - Remodelista
Thirty years ago, I met Calvin Tsao and Zack McKown of Tsao & McKown Architects when I went to scout and then shoot their first apartment on Central Park West for House & Garden magazine. Photographs by Richard Bryant (Arcaid), courtesy of Tsao & McKown. And both have, for me, been sources of intrigue and inspiration, from deft architectural moves to the smallest curiosity. For that, I had to wait to see the house in Piedmont, tucked in the eastern hills of San Francisco Bay, that Calvin and Zack designed for Calvin’s parents and his three siblings and their families as a gathering place. Principles of feng shui guided the siting of the cedar-clad house, located in a glen just down the hill from a house Calvin’s uncle has occupied since the 1970s. Highly-textured pavers recycle small granite stones salvaged from villages lost to the Three Gorges Dam project in China. What appear to be ancient Chinese artifacts in the garden are in fact the work of Rachel Miller, who studied at the Cranbrook Academy of Art (Calvin discovered her sculptures on a visit to the school for a design crit.) Rectangular mahogany-framed windows surround one of the entries. The dining room is the heart of the house, an enclosed version of the courtyard at the core of a traditional Chinese house. Around the cerused oak table, ebonized Deco chairs could easily be Chinese but are French. Origami meets architecture in the living room’s fireplace bay, which folds out then back in. Ombré is a favored motif in Chinese rugs; in the rug that Tsao & McKown designed for the living room, the warm tones in its midsection seem to extend the reach of the hearth. An island lined with an antique Chinese stools divides the all-stainless steel kitchen from the eating area, where everyone gravitates. The round lacquered table has a generous built-in lazy susan for serving family-style meals. Stair landings become balconies overlooking the interior court of the house. In the parents’ study, uniformly-framed photographs capture the family across the decades, including glamorous shots of Mr. and Mrs. Tsao taken in Shanghai in the ‘40s and a picture of Calvin, a global citizen even at age five, dressed in a kilt and playing a toy bagpipe. In one of the sisters’ bedrooms, a wall painted deep olive balances the natural greenery framed by the opposite wall of windows. Walls are rarely just walls in Tsao and McKown’s residential work. Tiles in varied shades of celadon switch direction as they move from floor to wall. The shower curtain hangs from a ceiling-mounted hospital track with space between curtain and ceiling for ventilation. A view toward the entry foyer demonstrates Tsao & McKown’s interest in–and deftness with–solids and voids. The plan for the ground floor shows the dining room at the center with satellite structures–the living room, kitchen, and bedrooms–radiating off it. The second floor is devoted to bedrooms suites. Their Eastern-influenced remodel of a New York townhouse is spotlighted in one of our earliest Architect Visit posts.