Houzz Tour: Platinum-Rating Hopes for a Sterling Modern Home

Architect David Marlatt has a love-hate relationship with the sun. He’s always looking to capture its natural light for the homes he designs, but at the same time trying to block — or sometimes harness — all its heat.

He had a particularly tough time dealing with that fiery ball in the sky for his latest design, a towering five-level home in San Francisco’s Castro neighborhood. Since the back of the house faces south, he wanted as much transparency as possible. But because he pushed the size of the house to city code constraints, he wasn’t allowed to build eaves or overhangs to cut back on some of the heat gain. Plus, a guest cottage at the back of the lot meant that side would need privacy. So glass windows were out of the question.

Marlatt’s solution was to create an entire wall of polycarbonate panels that gave him and his client everything they wanted: natural light, less heat gain, privacy and the ability to build to the site’s limits. What’s more, Marlatt hopes the move — and other clever gestures throughout the house — will help the home achieve LEED Platinum status. Take that, sun.