Best residential remodel: Stage set

Project: Honighaus, San Francisco

What we love: Clients with modern in mind find it’s not always easy to work within the San Francisco Planning Department’s historical mandates.

But the architects here proved the maxim that good design comes from constraints, creating an updated exterior for the 1910 Edwardian (see before photo next) to house a museum-like transformation indoors.

Jurors were particularly taken with the dramatic concrete “water wall” (at far left of house) that feeds into a small channel cascading to a pond at the rear of the property.

Design:  Ogrydziak/Prillinger Architects, San Francisco  (415/474-6724)