Japanese temple meets urban loft. That's one way to describe the Oakland hills home designed and built by Sally Lang. Hovering over a canyon, facing drop-dead views of the San Francisco Bay Bridge, the city's majestic downtown skyline, Mount Tam, and all points in between, the house is a tribute to Lang's love of Japanese architecture combined with her modern sensibilities.

The opportunity to build Lang's idealized home arrived when a group of friends, who had formed an investment collective, found this prized piece of land high in the hills of Oakland. Looking for a project to embark upon, the five of them put their pennies together and bought the land, designating Lang as the designer and builder of the spec home.

That was the easy part. Engineering a house on a 37-degree slope was the challenge. "To design a home on a lot that's so steep, and to make it pleasant to live in, I knew that would going to be hard," says Lang, who lives and works in Oakland. "But I'd been itching to do a Japanese-style house, and build it with as much green design as possible."

Just as with Japanese temple builders, Lang took painstaking care to tend to every detail of the home's construction, so it's no surprise that it took three years to come to fruition, from the time of the purchase of the property to the application of the final coat of paint last November.

"The idea was to create a Japanese hybrid," Lang says. "Traditional Japanese houses are tough for Americans to live in, because they're delicate and precious, so this house is kind of in between. It's got the aesthetic, the light, warmth and clean lines of Japanese homes, but it's still user-friendly and very hearty."

Lang earned her building chops from master builder Paul Discoe, founder of Joinery Structures, who studied Buddhist temple design and construction in Japan. Discoe had hired her to help build Larry Ellison's immense Japanese-inspired compound in Atherton, which is said to include a traditional tea house and bath house.

"I integrated a lot of what I learned from Paul into my own process," Lang says, referring to her comparatively modest project, the three-bedroom, four-bathroom home, which spans about 4,200 square feet over five levels, including the garage.

Using the Japanese building philosophy, she designed the home, had the frame built in a prefab shop in Canada, and when all the remaining infrastructure was in place, had it shipped and assembled.

"It's a very efficient way to build," she says. "But it's also harder. You have to be exact in your planning, but if you do it right and if you're meticulous, it goes together really nicely. There was barely a detail that was not worked out beforehand, so the house went up in six weeks."

ELEMENTS OF DESIGN

From the street, the only indication of what's inside is the Japanese torii-style gate. Once you approach the front entrance down a set of stairs, a hefty Japanese-style sliding door with horizontal mahogany slats, sets the stage. Above the front door and throughout other parts of the house, the wooden grid ceiling is just one of many nods to master temple builders. Even the security keypad is hidden inside an elegant wooden framed box.

Down the airy, wooden staircase on the second level is the main floor - living room, dining room, kitchen - framed by an open-beam wooden cathedral ceiling. The views out the many windows are the main diversion, but the graceful details of this "great room" are also noteworthy: the soapstone kitchen counter, open corner shelving, and textured glass cabinet doors, among other fineries. Lang even thought to designate an electronics closet for all the remote-control gadgets that can hide in there without cluttering the clean lines of the room. And for maximum efficiency, she installed a dumbwaiter that travels up and down all the floors.

In addition to the two bedrooms on the main floor, a luxurious master bedroom takes up the entire level below. From the bed, you can see Mount Tam, unless you prefer to gaze at the flames in the remote-control fireplace. Two huge walk-in closets and a walled-off lounging area add great utility to this quiet room, while in the bathroom, it's all understated glam. Travertine counter and sink, glass tile patterns evoking the shape of bamboo trees, radiant-heated towel bars, and a steam shower with multiple shower heads that cascade water from every conceivable angle would impress even the most discerning bathroom snob.

On the lowest level is where the urban loft element is fully realized. Eschewing the traditional sliding glass door, Lang installed two glass-paneled garage doors which, when opened, provide unfettered access to the wooden deck. With an adjoining sauna, its own separate entrance, a river-rock lined shower, and its own kitchenette, this room is what Lang calls the "spa level."

Although the home has strong modernist components, Lang's abundant use of wood softens the typical glass-and-steel aesthetic espoused by most modern homes.

"I love modern design, but I'm turned off by coldness and what feels to me as the over-industrial feel of it, so the wood was an attempt to warm it up," Lang says.

Indeed, wood plays a starring role in the home, from the built-in bench in the entryway and fireplace mantle in the living room that came from a felled elm rescued from the 1995 storm in Golden Gate Park, to the hand-planed cedar posts that feel like silk to the touch. Lang was industrious in using Forest Stewardship Council-certified, recycled, or locally harvested wood throughout the home. The wood for door and window trim came from Live Edge, a milling company that reuses salvaged trees, which is one of the many green elements incorporated into the design of the home - just as Lang had hoped.

All it needs now is a homeowner to take over its stewardship.