Home Tour Season Arrives

Modern home tours seem to be few and far between these days. That's a good reason to mark the calendar for Saturday May 17, 2025, when tour organizers present this year's edition of the 'Silicon Valley Modern Home Tour,' one day of exploring modern and contemporary living on the San Francisco Peninsula.

There'll be everything "from extraordinary ultramodern to Cali-cool," organizers promise. Ticketholders will be able to get inside six featured homes (10am to 4pm) and meet the participating architects and designers.

Of the half-dozen houses, two are Eichler projects, one of them redesigned by the Eichler Network's own Klopf Architecture.

"For the vast majority of people who live in more traditional styles of homes, when they go to their first Eichler home, it changes their life," points out John Klopf, one of the Klopf firm's principal architects. 'Ohhh, a house can be like this!' they say. 'Imagine the possibilities!'"

This year's homes were designed or redesigned by five different architectural firms:

• Bearington Studio worked on an owner-driven project inspired by a visit to Frank Lloyd Wright's Taliesin West.

• Greenberg Design Gallery + VRchitects, whose open concept, luxury two-story custom home features, according to tour organizers, "breathtaking bay views from every angle."

• Klopf Architecture features a custom, two-story mid-century-modern home sited in an historic oak grove in Saratoga; and an expanded and reconfigured renovation to an Eichler home in Palo Alto.

• S^A | Schwartz and Architecture took on the sensitive role of designing a renovation and addition, without losing any of the home's design integrity by its original architect, Aaron Green.

• TOPOS Architects designed a new contemporary home for a growing family that presents glass-walled living, dining, and family areas visible towards the street.

"There are some neat houses on the tour, and they're expecting 500 to 600 people," says Klopf, who will be on hand at his firm's Palo Alto house project on tour day. Fellow staffer, principal architect Angela Alexander will be at their Saratoga house.

This story's featured home #1 is the 'Indoor-Outdoor Eichler,' a redesign by Klopf's team. Originally designed by architect Claude Oakland and built in 1961, the 2,400-square-foot home features four bedrooms and two-and-one-half baths.

"This house is on a hillside, and the owners wanted to make the house fit into the site," explains Klopf. "From the upper level, you walk out to the backyard; at the lower level you walk out to the front yard. We tucked the house right into the hill, so it's meant to look like it's floating over the carport."

In order to expand the home while amplifying the indoor-outdoor connection to nature, the living spaces were reconfigured, adding a formal entry, a more spacious primary suite, and an expanded bedroom and hallway bath.

Visitors will appreciate the large glass wall at the atrium, and the MCM-inspired geometric screen. To really bring the outdoors in, Klopf replaced the original sliders, creating a dramatic difference.