Peninsula Residence by Richard Beard Architects

Peninsula Residence is a project designed by Richard Beard Architects in 2017. Kelly Hohla Interiors provided interior design. Situated on a 2-acre (0.8-hectare) site in San Francisco Bay Area, California, USA, the house has an overall scale of roughly 12,000ft² (1,115m²).

The peninsula south of San Francisco is dotted with suburban towns and villages in the hills and valleys along the west side of the bay. Nestled amidst the hilly neighborhoods is a rare 2-acre site. Seeking a sun-filled property that afforded privacy and the opportunity to spread out, the clients jumped at the chance to secure the property. The abundance of flat land meant that the site would be able to accommodate a house and support structures with plenty of space leftover for the development of both active and passive landscapes.

“The program for the house was quite complicated,” notes Richard Beard, lead architect for the project and founder of Richard Beard Architects. “It required clever compositional moves to accommodate everything the clients wanted. While designed for easy and casual living on a day-to-day basis, it had to provide a generous entertaining space, office, fitness room, and guest quarters—all while maintaining privacy for everyone.” The house needed to be elegant yet functional, a family-friendly home that simultaneously conveyed permanence, comfort, luxury, tradition, and modernity. The challenge was how to weave these seemingly disparate notions together as a holistic solution. The answer was to create a house that functioned as a strong yet neutral armature and that relied upon traditional proportions and materials. The interiors could then serve as an elegant counterpoint, animating the spaces as desired.

— Richard Beard Architects