Inside a 1927 Art Deco building in San Francisco’s elegant Nob Hill neighborhood lives Lara Cumberland, COO of the property broker Pacaso. Her home, a 3,400-square-foot penthouse, might be steeped in history, but it’s also been recently revamped by AD PRO Directory firm Studio Ahead. “Art Deco is not a style I would typically be drawn to, but it felt so right for this particular apartment,” Cumberland recalls, noting how she sought out designers capable of melding that history with a modernity that reflected her own aesthetic. She also wanted to find professionals “who would have fun with it all. We ended up with some spectacular, much talked-about pieces.”
Homan Rajai and Elena Dendiberia, Studio Ahead’s creative directors, indeed reveled in “merging multiple realities”—as Rajai puts it—in order to transform Cumberland’s light-filled abode with an array of vintage treasures, custom designs, and heaps of local artwork.
In the vast entry, for instance, Studio Ahead dreamed up a rug that has a “huge impact,” Cumberland notes. Spanning the entire long hallway until it meets a twin covering in the living room floor, the piece helps reinterpret the building’s rich architectural details in a contemporary fashion. Notably, its jagged silhouette sets the tone for the sense of duality that permeates the home.
Consider the living room: “It’s Art Deco meets the 1980s corporate power woman. There’s softness with a strength to it,” explains Rajai, singling out features like Studio Ahead’s expansive U-shaped sofa, which helps facilitate conversation amid mesmerizing views of the city, and beyond, the custom mirror seen on a retro console. Elsewhere, a quirky Gae Aulenti coffee table and Oakland designer Kate Greenberg’s elm-and-steel chair add further nuance to the decor.
The room’s Art Deco swirl of blue, black, and silver, punctuated with joyful bursts of yellow, extends to the dining room—where the sunny hue is even more prominent. One example is the luminescent resin chandelier by Spanish studio Las Ánimas. Suspended above the square-shaped dining table, the light fixture expresses the dynamism of the city’s abundant towers “when they are all lit up at night,” Rajai reflects.
These showier spaces are a deliberately stark contrast when compared to the more intimate, hushed ones. “Every personality has a public and private side, and as you move through the rooms, you see this beautiful juxtaposition,” notes Dendiberia. “There’s an alchemy in it.”
One of these more personal hangouts is the “heavily draped and cocoon-like” media room, as Rajai describes it, which is a grounding escape in which Cumberland can watch movies with her teenage son, an aspiring architect. There’s a similarly warm aura in the airy primary bedroom, which is anchored by an ethereal curtain-shrouded bed topped with a locally sourced felted wool throw from JG Switzer. It’s especially dramatic at night, adds Cumberland, “with the candles flickering reflecting off the mirror and the whole room glowing in a soft white light.”
Uniting these spaces is Studio Ahead’s generous embrace of striking art and objects that speak to both the surrounding landscape and Cumberland’s lifestyle—which is all about glamor meets a “California ease of living—and not being too serious about yourself,” Dendiberia says. In general, adds Rajai, “our ethos is encouraging clients to become patrons of local artists. I love the idea that this Nob Hill penthouse has a bunch of Oakland and West Marin artists in it.”
In the living room, an old photograph of Puerto Vallarta taken by Cumberland’s grandfather is aptly tucked into a Oaxacan-made mirror frame, while in the dining room Sarah Thibault’s trippy floral painting, one of the many edgy pieces acquired through the Oakland gallery Pt.2, seamlessly meshes with Petaluma artist Ted McCann’s geometrically precise work. “It’s a fun reference to the skyscraper grids you see in the cityscape outside,” adds Dendiberia. It also takes inspiration from a window in late sculptor JB Blunk’s rural Inverness studio, an ode to nature that Cumberland wanted to weave into the interiors.
Certain furnishings, including the living room’s undulating 1990s Danish daybed, reinforce this connection to the land, so that “there’s a poetry to this whole penthouse,” says Rajai. “We wanted a sophisticated energy, a place where you can lay down with your glass of mezcal and enjoy art that invigorates you.”
