Designed for a family of contemporary art collectors, this San Francisco home brings architecture, interiors, and art into quiet conversation, allowing everyday life and serious collecting to coexist naturally.
Domestic, But Not Conventional
The living room is anchored by a 26-foot sectional that transforms a familiar piece of furniture into an architectural element. Custom hexagonal walnut tables introduce flexibility, allowing the room to shift effortlessly between quiet family life and lively entertaining.
Beyond the Gallery
Rather than creating gallery-like rooms, the home allows art to become part of daily life. Sculptural furniture, handcrafted objects, and contemporary works coexist naturally, creating interiors where art is discovered gradually rather than viewed from a distance.
The Art of Composition
Bjorn Design approached the house as a composition in which architecture, furnishings, and lighting are considered together, creating a setting for the art. Each element retains its own identity while contributing to an interior rich in texture, character, and discovery, unfolding from room to room.
Designed Around Living
Rather than centering the media room on a television, the space is organized around the rhythms of family life. A generous sectional welcomes conversation, music, work, and film, allowing the room to evolve naturally throughout the day.
Making Constraints Beautiful
Throughout the home, architectural challenges become opportunities for invention. Freestanding volumes, integrated furnishings, and discreetly concealed functions transform awkward conditions into purposeful moments, allowing the architecture to feel natural and resolved.
About the Project
Designed for a family of contemporary art collectors, The Living Collection explores how architecture, interiors, and art can become part of a single, cohesive experience. Located in San Francisco, the project reimagines a long and unusually proportioned residence, transforming its challenging layout into a home that feels generous, connected, and deeply personal.
Rather than treating art as decoration, the design began with the belief that it should be woven naturally into the experience of the home. Paintings, sculpture, handcrafted furnishings, and custom millwork are considered with equal care, creating relationships between objects, materials, and spaces that reveal themselves over time.
Throughout the project, the architecture was refined through a series of precise interventions. A sofa back table nestled into the living room bay window accommodates a 26-foot sectional, giving the room a new architectural center of gravity. Additional custom furnishings resolve awkward niches, while freestanding volumes separate public and private spaces. These moments are rarely noticed individually, yet together they transform the experience of living in the house.
Equally important was creating a home that could accommodate the changing patterns of family life. Rooms are designed with a degree of openness rather than around a single prescribed use. Flexible display areas allow the art collection to shift and expand over time, giving the interiors room to change alongside it.
The Living Collection reflects Bjorn Design’s belief that exceptional interiors are not created by filling rooms with beautiful objects, but by bringing architecture, furnishings, materials, light, and art into considered relationship. The result is a home that is sophisticated without feeling formal, expressive without becoming overwhelming, and deeply connected to the lives of the people who inhabit it.
Credits
Interior Design & Furnishings: Bjorn Design
Architecture: John Lum Architecture
Construction: Kenny Lyons Construction
Photography: Adam Rouse