Hunting Down Dinwiddie

Sep 15
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Photos: Lydia Lee

Architectural Record’s House of the Month in September is a renovation of a midcentury home by Olson Kundig. Visiting the 1951 house in the Berkeley hills was a chance to commune with the spirit of the architect past, John Ekin Dinwiddie. It was hard to find much on the internet about Dinwiddie, but he was an early modernist in the Bay Area. The homeowner had the original blueprints, including one for this UFO-like sunshade. The plans for the main house had another architect’s name on it, but this separate drawing was signed by Dinwiddie himself. You can see how it was quite thought out, including the gooseneck lamp positioned overhead to shine down at night. He wanted to do something different.

The view leading up to the front door.

The view leading up to the front door.

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Looking out the front door.


Swatt Miers house for Silicon Valley Magazine

May 13
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Photo: Russell Abraham

The new Silicon Valley magazine just debuted in March. It’s a sister publication to San Francisco magazine, and is published by Modern Luxury. For the premiere issue, I interviewed Bob Swatt of Swatt Miers Architects. The house in the story, “Inside Out”, is notable for an enormous wall of wood-framed windows. When you walk up the stairs, it has the feeling of a college building or library–the scale is very dramatic. Swatt told me the window pattern was one of those sketches on a napkin that came to life pretty much as drawn!