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 is both personal and entrepreneurial. The project was conceived for a small developer and his family, with the possibility that they could move into the home themselves or eventually sell it. That dual use case shaped the project: it needed to be specific enough to function as a real family home, but disciplined enough to remain viable as a marketable asset.
This is a different kind of small-scale development than a speculative subdivision or large production project. The developer is not working at an abstract distance from the home. The potential end user is his own family. That creates a more personal standard for the design, siting, and lived experience of the house.
At the same time, the project retains flexibility. If the family ultimately chooses not to occupy the home, the house can be sold as a distinct hillside residence in Mill Valley. That makes the project a practical example of how small developers operate in high-cost infill markets: balancing personal use, entitlement risk, construction complexity, and future resale value.
The home’s setting is central to its value. Rather than offering a conventional suburban lot, Oakdale offers a compact hillside living experience embedded in the redwoods, with a large deck as the primary outdoor room. The use case is not maximum density; it is a carefully placed home on a difficult site, using SB 9 to make a constrained parcel viable.
