This year the AIA SF is debuting a second home tour, up in Marin,  in addition to its popular home tour in San Francisco happening later on in September. Smart move: there’s some great architecture going on in this area just north of the city–the area is so close, yet a world away. Freed from the strictures of squeezing in between row houses, and surrounded by bucolic landscapes and bay views, architects have come up with some lovely examples of contemporary living.

The one-day tour on May 15 offers a look at five homes. But the one that is a definite “can’t miss” is architect Daniel Liebermann’s first home, which he built in 1960.  Still practicing out of Inverness today at age 80, at that time Liebermann had graduated from architecture school at Harvard and was fresh off of an apprenticeship at Taliesen West.  He was flush with ideas that he wanted to test on his own house:  living in harmony with the landscape,  maximizing solar exposure–and from a design standpoint, using curved forms that played with one’s normal sense of scale.

Sensitively restored by architect Vivian Dwyer, who worked for Anne Fougeron before setting out on her own, the home is a time trip, upgraded for its journey into the future.  If you go, check out the immense stone “sofa”: it  was carefully brought to the site before construction started, and Liebermann used it as a camp cot, spending nights there while he was building the house around it.