Hearst
Berkeley, California
Hearst began as a straightforward replacement project. The existing house, located in West Berkeley, was in very poor condition, and the initial scope was to demolish the structure and build a new single-family home in its place. The project changed when we learned that the house, despite its deteriorated condition and unremarkable architecture, was protected under Berkeley’s historic register. What had appeared to be a simple demolition-and-rebuild project became something much more specific: a preservation-driven reconstruction project governed by both building code and historic review constraints. The design retains the front wall and one side wall of the existing house in their entirety, including studs, cladding, and windows. The rear and remaining side are replaced with a Type Five structural and compositional system. The result is neither a conventional restoration nor a conventional new build. It is a hybrid project: part retained structure, part new system, part preservation strategy, part construction prototype.
The home showcases some of our signature design features: the entryway unfolds into a spacious, open living and dining area, with abundant natural light from the south-facing windows.
Details
- 1,600 exterior square feet
- Two-story layout
- Three bedroom, two-bathroom
- Full-size built-in kitchen
- Large attached balcony
Hearst shows how infill work can serve family continuity as much as housing production. For the owners, the project creates a path for their daughter to live nearby, within an existing community of friends and neighbors. For the property, it converts a vacant and deteriorated protected structure into a functional home. For the practice, it opens a new category of work: a procedurally prosthetic architecture, situated between bespoke and modular, between old and new, and between idiosyncratic existing conditions and repeatable building systems.
The entitlement story for Hearst is about how a project that initially appeared to require demolition was redirected through a retention-based approval path.
The existing house was in poor condition, and demolition would have been the most direct construction strategy. However, its status on Berkeley’s historic register made full demolition difficult or potentially infeasible within the project’s original assumptions. Rather than pursue a discretionary preservation battle or abandon the project, the team identified a path based on retaining more than fifty percent of the exterior envelope.
That threshold became the organizing principle of the project. By preserving the front and one side wall in their entirety, the project could remain legible as a modification of the existing structure rather than a complete replacement. This allowed the work to proceed ministerially while still permitting substantial reconstruction where the building was no longer viable.
The project therefore reframes preservation as a measurable procedural condition. The question is not simply whether the existing house is historically valuable, nor whether it should be frozen in its current state. The question becomes: how much of the existing building must remain for the project to qualify for a more predictable approval path, and how can the new work be organized around that requirement?
The client story begins with an unusual ownership condition. The house sits on a large lot held as a tenancy in common with another home. The structure had been vacant for a long time, and the owners were unsure what to do with it. It was too compromised to function as a normal renovation project, but too entangled in the property’s legal and historic conditions to be treated as a simple teardown.
The owners’ goal was not speculative development. They wanted to create a new house that their daughter could live in, close to their existing friends, neighbors, and community. The vacant structure represented both a problem and an opportunity: an unused building occupying valuable land, but also a possible way to keep family nearby without leaving the neighborhood or disrupting the broader property arrangement.
That goal reframed the project. Rather than asking how to maximize the site, the question became how to transform an inactive and deteriorated structure into a viable home for a specific family member. The project needed to work within the constraints of the TIC, the historic designation, and the existing building fabric, while still producing a house that could function as a genuine new residence.
Hearst is therefore less about adding density in the abstract and more about reactivating a stranded piece of housing. The existing house had effectively fallen out of use. By retaining the portions necessary to preserve the approval pathway and rebuilding the portions that could no longer reasonably perform, the project turns a long-vacant structure into a purposeful family home.
