California's Creativity Sensing Δ 16th of December 2017 Ω 3:33 PM

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~ UCLA Department of Arts ~ California Institute of Arts ~ San Francisco Arts Institute	~ Super Basements ~ Ponoko ~ IGIGI	~ Qualcomm ~ Here Be Dragons ~ WithIn
~ Strategies in Light ~ sense for Ξ ~ sense for Ξ	~ sense for Ξ ~ sense for Ξ ~ sense for Ξ	~ sense for Ξ ~ sense for Ξ ~ sense for Ξ
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«U.S. Creativity Sensing	Θ	Θ
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~ UCLA Department of Arts

»UCLA Department of Arts

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~ California Institute of Arts

»California Institute of Arts

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~ San Francisco Arts Institute

»San Francisco Arts Institute

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~ uper Basements

Super Basements
When architect Roger Kohler began designing them years ago, basements weren't luxury statements.
He would tuck a subterranean guest room here, a mechanical room there.
The lighting was only adequate, the ceilings sometimes just 7 feet high.
You practically had to stoop while walking through: "It was grim," he said.

But it's dank and dark no more.

"You see the light in here?
It's incredible," Kohler said, walking through a client's sunny -- yes, sunny -- basement,
all 2,200 square feet of it, airy with 9�-foot ceilings.
There's a fitness center with a row of exercise machines, flat-screen TV and plush armchairs for hanging out.
There's a window-lined living room and a spacious bedroom with glass doors
opening onto a European-style courtyard that sits at the base of a 12-foot whitewashed retention wall.

Time was, California houses often sat on concrete slabs.
Now basements are everywhere as land values skyrocket in Silicon Valley and around the Bay Area.

Municipalities set limits on the maximum size of houses,
but basements can provide a relief valve: If you can't build up or out because of the size of your lot, then go down.
Rules vary among cities, but subterranean spaces typically are not counted as part of the square footage of new construction,
thereby allowing owners to vastly increase the size of their residences.

It's bonus space, and it's often creatively fashioned:
Excavate enough dirt, even on a flat lot, and the sun can pour down through entire walls of below-grade windows.
Call it a different kind of subterranean animal.

"The basement doesn't feel like a basement," said Arthur Sharif,
a Peninsula-based agent with Sotheby's International.
"It's daylight. It's sunlight streaming in" via stairwells, lightwells, banks of windows.
Some agents argue that well-designed lower levels add as much value to a house as a living room, kitchen or anything else above grade.

Grace Wu, an Alain Pinel agent in Palo Alto,
owns a house in the city's Green Acres neighborhood.
Designed by Kohler in the mid-1990s, it has 3,000 square feet above ground,
plus 1,900 square feet below, where Wu has a large recreation room, two bedrooms and a laundry room.
It's light and bright and "in the winter time it's warm,
in the summer time it's cool. You don't need air conditioning."

If she were to sell the house, she figures, those additional 1,900 square feet would "make the price jump" to as much as $6 million.
Without its basement, which cost about $300,000 to build, the house would bring "about $4.5 million,
and if people are fighting, maybe more."

Like man caves a few years back, superbasements are now the rage because the housing market is so hot and
so much money is available from lenders to build homes to suit the tastes of a new gilded age.

"Our clients would rather build above ground, but they run out of choices,"
said Robert Swatt of Swatt Miers Architects in Emeryville,
whose designs are sprinkled through Silicon Valley, the East Bay and Marin.
"They want basements when they've maxed out on the square-foot limit."

For client Ed Shimmon, a tech businessman who lives in Los Altos Hills,
Swatt's firm designed a 7,500-square-foot home with views out to Moffett Field.
The ground-level living spaces flow down to the basement wine cellar,
adjacent to a mahogany-paneled, surround-sound theater where Shimmon and
guests recline in leather armchairs while watching auto races,
football games and live concerts on a 12-foot screen.
"It's amazing down there," Shimmon said.
"Watching Formula One from Monaco is just like being in Monaco."
His guests float between theater and wine cellar, sampling vintages, "a real casual scene."

With advances in construction technology -- underground waterproofing is a big one on the Peninsula
-- and the seemingly limitless budgets of some of today's owners, below-ground choices are proliferating:
"What you'll commonly see are spas, movie theaters, hobby rooms -- you name it," Sharif said.

Other agents and developers list subterranean amenities as varied as a homeowner's imagination:
40-foot lap pools, racquetball courts, model railroad setups, saunas, basketball courts, bowling alleys.

"A lot of people are using them for garage spaces,
really tricked out, like for 10 or 12 cars," said agent Andrew Greenwell,
whose Venture Sotheby's International Realty is in Pleasanton.
He mentions one house in that city's Ruby Hill area where "there's glass floors in the living room where you can look down and see all the cars."

He cautions that not every flight down translates into profit,
especially if it's a more typical dim and musty space.

But even on smaller lots in midtown Palo Alto, "people are spending millions of dollars and they want to get the most floor area,"
said Amy French, the city's chief planning official.
"These days I'm surprised if I don't see a basement."

The trend has come to a head in Woodside, w
here two years ago the town approved a supersized basement on Mountain Wood Lane of nearly 14,000 square feet:
wine cellar, massage room, family room, workout center, media room, three bathrooms, two powder rooms, pantry, six-car garage and more.

A proposed 8,000-square-foot "art cave"
-- for showcasing a homeowner's collection -- didn't make it through the planning stages.

But the reconstruction of a 9,500-square-foot basement slated for a home on Mountain Home Road
was approved to feature a bowling alley, sunken courtyard and more.

For some, the character of the town -- which is considering restrictions on subterranean construction --
is threatened by the latest building trend:
"We're supposed to be a rural community,"
said Thalia Lubin, chair of the town's Architectural and Site Review Board,
objecting to the amount of grading and excavation required by some projects.
"If you've got truckloads and truckloads of dirt coming out of the property next door -- well, we just want some guidance on it."

But for now, it's still dig, dig, dig.

Contact Richard Scheinin at 408-920-5069, read his stories at www.mercurynews.com/richard-scheinin and follow him at www.twitter.com/RealEstateRag

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~ Ponoko

»Ponoko
ξ cpo@yourdragonxi.com
ξ ponoko4dragonxi
ξ Paivi MayHill

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~ IGIGI

»IGIGI

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~ Qualcomm

»Qualcomm

Snapdragon Wear 1200 platform
ξ Snapdragon-based platform to connect wearable devices to cellular IoT networks
ξ brings support for LTE categories M1 (or eMTC) and NB1 (more commonly known as NB-IoT)
ξ to targeted purpose wearable devices such as child, pet, elderly and fitness trackers
ξ a multimode platform for targeted wearables where the requirements include
ξ a smaller size, longer battery life, smarter sensing, constant location,
ξ robust security and an always connected experience with comprehensive coverage
ξ chip includes an LTE system-on-chip (SoC),
ξ power management integrated circuit and
ξ wireless transceiver, ultra-low power management operation,
ξ a global multimode M1/NB1/E-GPRS modem with support for 15 global RF bands
ξ that is pre-certified for major operators, plus the ability to add external sensor hubs
ξ integrated applications processor for Linux and ThreadX based applications
ξ is scalable to support voice over LTE, WiFi and Bluetooth
ξ integrated hardware-based security features including Qualcomm�s Secure Execution Environment,
ξ a hardware cryptographic engine, hardware random number generator and TrustZone
ξ Original design manufacturers (ODMs), China�s Borqs and Quanta have developed reference platforms based on the Wear 1200
ξ for the child, elderly and pet tracking segments � to enable device manufacturers to quickly commercialise new products
ξ China�s second largest MVNO releasing wearable devices based on the Wear 1200 platform

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~ Here Be Dragons

»dragons.org

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~ WithIn

»WithIn
ξ a VR company on a mission to tell extraordinary stories in virtual reality

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~ Strategies in Light

»Strategies in Light

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