Tour a Designer's Quirky Bay Area Home—Part City Pad, Part Tropical Garden

Art: Reinaldo Sanguino/The Future Perfect.

Alexis Tompkins, cofounder of the San Francisco design firm Chroma, is no stranger to color, having conjured some of the West Coast’s boldest rooms in recent memory. But no palette,
in her eyes, can compete with Mother Nature’s. So when the 2021 AD New American Voices honoree went hunting for a family home after years in a third-level apartment, “it was my dream to have some outdoor space. A little patch of green is such a luxury in a city.” Creating the oasis she was envisioning, however, would require some elbow grease, improvisation, and collaboration.

After losing several bidding wars on historic homes in the Mission District, Tompkins and her husband, tech entrepreneur and musician Ian Mesey, decided to expand their parameters. “I warned our real estate agent that we wanted to prioritize location, so we were going to have to start looking at weird stuff,” he recalls. Then they came across a quirky multifamily property comprising two cottages, each of them single-story with one bedroom. Having just given birth to their first child—Avery, now three years old—Tompkins wasn’t interested in cohabitating with a tenant. After a reluctant tour, however, she was sold on the courtyard and its blooming magnolia tree. She knew she could make the modest compound (just 1,280 square feet) their own.

Clad in redwood, the front-gabled building was originally constructed in Golden Gate Park as a so-called earthquake shack—emergency housing for people displaced by the 1906 and moved it to its current site, presumably later adding the rear flat-roofed structure. Unconventional though the dual cottages were, they presented a unique opportunity to separate private and public zones. With advice from local architectural designer John Toya, Tompkins and Mesey reimagined the front one as an open-plan living area, dining area, and kitchen, with a bathroom. The back one, meanwhile, became the sleeping wing, with two bedrooms, another bath, and a practice space for Mesey, a bass and guitar player.

Between the cottages there is now a new redwood deck, hand-charred and finished by Mesey in the shou sugi ban technique. A circular cutout accommodates that beloved magnolia, which is joined by new greenery courtesy of local landscape designer Erica Timbrell, who filled built-in planters and pots with what she describes as “the San Francisco version of a tropical garden.” To complete that vision, Tompkins curated vibrant outdoor pieces by the likes of Franco Albini, Reinaldo Sanguino, and Martino Gamper.

The couple’s love of color continues inside, where blue features prominently in the form of a custom denim carpet and the bathrooms’ atmospheric Rafael Arana murals. Other primary shades act as accents, whether the red 1970s mohair-upholstered sectional or the yellow antique love seat. And rounding out the classic California vibe are works by fellow Bay Area creatives like their friend Rafi Ajl, who crafted the walnut-trimmed plywood cabinetry, and Victoria Weiss, who painted the verre églomisé backsplash.

In the end, taking a chance on this “weird” home has allowed Tompkins and Mesey the kind of close community they always desired. The family loves to entertain, often welcoming Chroma cofounder Leann Conquer, whose brother’s family also happens to live nearby and come over often. “We didn’t know what a full city life with kids would look like,” admits Tompkins, pregnant with her second child at the time of our interview. “This house is facilitating things that didn’t seem like they could happen.”

Originally Appeared on Architectural Digest

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