After more than six decades, even homes designed during the peak of Modernism are starting to look dated. Seattle-based Olson Kundig recently revived a classic example from 1951, perched high up in the hills of Berkeley, California. “It was a solid midcentury house, with a strong parti,” says principal Tom Kundig. “Our challenge was to maintain the spirit of the building.”

The original architect, John Ekin Dinwiddie, is one of the now-forgotten practitioners in the Bay Area who were pushing the envelope. The house he designed for his sister-in-law caused consternation among the neighbors on this closely packed hillside, overlooking the East Bay and San Francisco. Dinwiddie organized the building around the view, designing the living room as a long, fully glazed bar with the panorama of the Bay in front and a quiet courtyard in back. On the south end of the bar, he placed a wing with the dining area, kitchen, and maid’s quarters; he bracketed the north end with a two-story volume with bedrooms on both levels and clad two impressive walls in Southwestern stacked-stone veneer that is very evocative of the era. But the house’s most startling element is an 8-foot-wide circular metal canopy, inset with a thick glass disc, that shades the front door. (It’s worth mentioning that Dinwiddie studied architecture with Eliel Saarinen at the University of Michigan in the 1920s and briefly partnered with Erich Mendelsohn while the German émigré taught at the Univer­sity of California, Berkeley.)