Pitcher's Prow

With a panoramic view west across the entire San Francisco Bay, from San Jose to the Golden Gate bridge, this exterior architecture project emerges prow-like from the Oakland, CA hills.  A plunge pool and upper and lower seating and entertainment terraces/decks cascade downward from the existing house.  A steel pergola pinwheels its cantilevering triangular arms outward to shade the built-in grilling and upper seating area.  Seeking to re-establish a California meadow along the re-claimed slopes of what was once the Leona Stone Quarry (supplying crushed 140 million year old rhyolite rock for use in macadam and concrete for Bay Area projects such as I-580, Oakland Airport and Coliseum, berths of the Port of Oakland, and BART), the plantings are a matrix of purple needlegrass (California’s state grass), California poppy, Silver Bush Lupine, and California sagebrush.