Visitors to the Living Steel website most often find paeans to the virtues of steel as a structural material and its advantages in framing for residential housing.

However, architects also are using steel in more limited, but specific, structural applications as well as for its appeal in functional and ornamental architectural applications.

“We like steel,” says architect Jim Zack. “Its high strength-to-weight ratio makes it a very efficient material, which we like to take advantage of in non-structural architectural elements.”

Zack, of Zack|de Vito Architecture, San Francisco, has leveraged steel’s attributes in the firm’s award-winning Laidley House, in which he and his wife, Lise de Vito now reside with their two children.

Laidley House is a contemporary, 3,000-square-foot home built on a typically narrow, 25-by-100 foot, San Francisco residential lot. It features open-plan spaces including a large living room/dining room/kitchen area.

“We used the material extensively in the house, even though there’s not much purely structural steel,” Zack says. The design includes several applications where steel proved to be an ideal choice, such as moment frames, a cantilevered exterior deck and a support system for the large bay window in the front of the house. Steel fascias also trim-out the exterior stucco.

The stairs connecting the sleek house’s three levels comprises water jet-cut steel stringers, with acrylic treads and steel and glass guardrails.

“Using steel for the stairs resulted in a relatively small structure that saves space while providing a visually very pleasing effect, something we could not have accomplished in wood, for example,” he says. “We also selected steel for the front door frame and interior door jambs, for both aesthetics and function.”

The main structural construction consists of pre-fabricated wood panels that were craned into place and assembled on-site, a process that took just three weeks to complete.

The house also features an array of energy-efficient components including power-generating photo voltaic cells, radiant heating, solar-heated water, and water-saving toilets.

“Sustainability is a complicated issue, but we seek an optimal balance between the ideal and the practical,” Zack says. “With all the energy-saving strategies we’ve designed into this house, we require nothing from the grid for six months a year. Sometimes our meter even runs backwards.”

Laidley House has earned AIA national and AIA San Francisco chapter awards, along with numerous citations from various architecture and home building media and magazines.