In 2006, when Dan Spiegel and Megumi Aihara were dating, the fellow Harvard GSD students won a traveling fellowship that allowed them to explore Paris together. For the research paper required by the grant, the couple analyzed the conversion of a 19th-century viaduct into the Coulée verte René- Dumont elevated park. “It was an opportunity to put together some ideas about how things change over a long period, sometimes unexpectedly,” Spiegel says of his and Aihara’s first collaboration. As cofounders of San Francisco–based studio Spiegel Aihara Workshop (SAW), the 38-year-olds create environments that support and even welcome diverse outcomes over time.
After Spiegel and Aihara graduated from the GSD with degrees, respectively, in architecture and landscape architecture, Spiegel began devising a Menlo Park, California, residence for his parents while Aihara worked full-time for other firms, pitching in on the 4,500-square-foot house on nights and weekends. Completed in 2013, the dwelling comprises narrow, daylight-filled vertical and horizontal elements, which reference northern California’s historic farm towers and pervasive ranch houses. The volumes include a flat ground level and independent upper-floor living suite, so Mom and Dad may comfortably occupy only a portion of the interior or open up the entire house for entertaining kids and grandkids; further down the road, the design will allow them to age in place with the help of a caretaker inhabiting the tower apartment.
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