a living room with a couch, coffee table, and a book shelf
Ipanema sofas by Didier Gomez join a Pukka chair by Yabu Pushelberg.

November 26, 2024

Words: Elizabeth Fazzare

Photography: Jonathan Cohen

Picture Perfect: A Photography Studio Turned Dream Home

It was less than a year into the pandemic when Sophia Vicent toured her future home, a photo­grapher’s studio built in 1991 in San Francisco’s Potrero Hill neighborhood, its unconventional architecture sparking instant appeal. “It was love at first sight,” she recalls of the two-story, pavilionlike building with cinder-block walls, timber-framed glass panels that fill the ground floor with sunlight, a gabled birch ceiling with exposed steel trusses, and front and back gardens, a city rarity. “But,” Vicent continues, “it had a lot of warts,” particularly, the dark, water-damaged subgrade level; it’d been the darkroom, so it had no cross-ventilation and was reached via a ladderlike stair.

But that same owner had an affinity for Japanese aesthetics and crafted the house with an indoor-outdoor relationship, including siting a cherry tree to be visible from inside, a detail that felt fateful to Vicent, who has a cherry branch tattooed across her shoulder. However, to transform the 1,600 square feet into a livable quarters for herself, her college-age daughter, and their dog, she needed a professional who would also appreciate its quirks. Enter Brooke Aitken, director of her namesake, Sydney-based firm, who had previously lived in Japan and Vicent had met years ago while she’d been visiting nearby Palo Alto. For this near gut renovation, Aitken was not only commissioned via Zoom but also concepted everything with Vicent on the virtual platform.

a living room with a large wall of books
In the living area of a two-story former photography studio turned two-bedroom home, the cinder-block wall and birch ceiling are original to 1991, but the Ohm nesting tables, Zig Zag stool, and custom lacquered shelf are new; the Winter Light rug is from Rill and Stone, the Brooke Aitken Design founder’s home-products company.
a living room with wooden ceilings and white furniture
Beneath existing exposed-steel trusses, the kitchen’s Revolver stools by Leon Ransmeier stand on engineered white-oak floor­boards.
a bathroom with a sink and a mirror
Opera Fantastico marble reappears topping the powder room’s custom vanity.

Tour This Unique Home By Brooke Aitken Design

The architect concluded that most elements—from floors to doorframes—had to be replaced. But she preserved the clerestory windows and cinder-block walls, their tones ranging from greige to burnt sienna, adding to the home’s wabi-sabi. Upstairs, they background new public spaces: a custom kitchen with hemlock-veneered cabinetry and a crisp white-tile backsplash color-matched in the sculptural island, a living area with plush seating by Didier Gomez and Yabu Pushelberg, and a dining area, which doubles as a home office, a printer and such hidden inside millwork.

Vicent, who’s vice president of engineering at DoorDash, also has a built-in desk downstairs, where Aitken “borrowed as much light as we could,” from the exterior courtyards and upper level through employing glass doors where possible. The former rickety stair has been replaced by one in oak and marble with a rhythmic gridded guardrail. She also carved out two bedrooms, a bathroom (there’s a renovated powder room upstairs as well), and a laundry room. Otherwise, she embraced this level’s coziness, covering walls in linenlike vinyl and the ceiling in grass cloth.

a bedroom with a bed and a blue rug
Vinyl or grass-cloth wallcovering envelop the main bedroom, furnished with a Miro bed by Gabriel Tan, Turoy armchair, and Maria Kostareva artwork.

Although most finishes are natural, pops of red appear in the stairwell, on cabinetry, and in select furnishings. “We played with color atop a really calm base,” Aitken explains. Also calming are the Japanese-inspired gardens, to which the home can open entirely. “I close the gate and the city disappears,” Vicent notes. “It’s such a peaceful thing.”

Take A Look At The Home’s Wabi-Sabi Aesthetic 

a small garden with a wooden deck and a tree
The glass-and-timber, 1,600-square-foot home opens to a multilevel rear garden, with a cobblestone patio and an existing cherry tree.
a living room with a couch, coffee table, and a book shelf
Ipanema sofas by Didier Gomez join a Pukka chair by Yabu Pushelberg.
a red staircase with wooden stairs and a red bench
Oak and Opera Fantastico marble compose the custom stair down to the bedroom level, its custom wooden guardrail spray-painted Baked Terracotta.
a modern house with a wooden staircase
A Mangas Original Caramelo otto­man by Patricia Urquiola awaits at the bottom of the stairs on the lower level, where flooring changes to ceramic tile.
a kitchen with a bar and a bar stool
The custom kitchen features a Corian-topped island, hemlock-veneered cabinetry, tile backsplash, and a Stickbulb pendant fixture.

FROM FRONT SUN AT SIX: NESTED TABLES (LIVING AREA). CLIC: STOOL. SAMSUNG: TV. LIGNE ROSET: SEATING. DWR: BOOKSHELF (LIVING AREA), BED (BEDROOM). HAY: STOOLS (KITCHEN). CORIAN: ISLAND SOLID SURFACING. PIETRA FINA STONE: MARBLE (STAIR). GAN: OTTO­MAN. ARTICLE: ARMCHAIR (BEDROOM). EGG AND DART: WALL­COVERING. THIBAUT: CEILING COVERING. LULU & GEORGIA: SIDE TABLE. SCHOOL­HOUSE: SCONCES. IN COMMON WITH: PENDANT FIX­TURE. THEBATHOUTLET: SINK (POWDER ROOM). BELMONT HARD­WARE: SINK FITTINGS. HEATH: BACKSPLASH TILE (KITCHEN). STICK­BULB: PENDANT FIXTURE. THROUGHOUT RILL AND STONE: RUGS. CARLISLE: WOOD FLOORING. SPEC CERAMICS: FLOOR TILE. BENJAMIN MOORE & CO.: PAINT. ARTISAN WOODMASTERS: WOOD­WORK. MORFOLOGY LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE: LANDSCAPE ARCHITECT. TIPPING STRUC­TURAL: STRUCTURAL ENGINEER. CB CONSTRUCTION: GENERAL CONTRACTOR.

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