Office: SAW // Spiegel Aihara Workshop | ArchDaily

Moksha House / SAW // Spiegel Aihara Workshop

Pilar Caballero — Fri, 24 Apr 2026 07:00:00 +0000

A Site of Dramatic Beauty
Set atop a 3.1-acre site in Portola Valley, a scenic, northern-California town strewn across rolling hillsides, panoramic views unfurl across the adjacent Stanford University campus to the San Francisco Bay. Moksha reveals itself gradually through the landscape, culminating in a sculpted composition of expressive material forms. The landscape and architecture balance presence and restraint, a study in enduring figures shaped by light and time.

Middle Half House / SAW // Spiegel Aihara Workshop

Paula Pintos — Wed, 16 Nov 2022 16:00:00 +0000

The project is the transformative architectural and landscape design of a 1962 home in Mill Valley for a couple and their two young children. The project, known as The Middle Half, dramatically reconfigures the home’s core to create an open, light-flooded interior and direct connection to the landscape. Raw, textured materials like galvanized steel, rough-sawn cedar siding, and cast-in-place concrete define the project and accentuate its unexpected, layered geometries.

Fourth Wall House / SAW // Spiegel Aihara Workshop

Paula Pintos — Wed, 10 Aug 2022 16:00:00 +0000

For The Fourth Wall, Spiegel Aihara Workshop (SAW) renovates and expands a 1907 home in Bernal Heights, repositioning the house as a stage. Rather than inward-facing and endlessly interior, rooms are reoriented towards a new rear facade, enabling scenes of domesticity to play out across large windows facing the backyard. Referencing theater, this design breaks through the “fourth wall” as a performance of the daily routine.

Void House / SAW // Spiegel Aihara Workshop

Paula Pintos — Tue, 09 Aug 2022 10:00:00 +0000

Before Atherton, CA was a Silicon Valley boom town, lower-slung houses patterned around the landscape. Void House began when SAW encountered a house at the end of a quiet cul-de-sac, settled amongst the oaks, and organized around a courtyard - all sensible arrangements. Yet there was something sort of odd happening here, a sort of top-heaviness, that was evidenced by a facade that was seemingly all roof. On the interior, it turns out this was almost all attic - largely inaccessible, and highly inefficient.

A-to-Z House / SAW // Spiegel Aihara Workshop

Rayen Sagredo — Mon, 26 Jun 2017 14:00:00 +0000

The A-to- Z House proposes an alternative to conventional approaches for expanding an outmoded San Francisco home. Perched on a hillside in Golden Gate Heights, a modest single story 1934 developer vernacular structure had limited space and failed to take advantage of expansive views of Sutro Tower, Golden Gate Park, Sausalito, and the Bay.

Low/Rise House / SAW // Spiegel Aihara Workshop

Cristian Aguilar — Fri, 04 Apr 2014 00:00:00 +0000