(Photo by Kat Alves, courtesy of Serrao Design | Architecture) Husband-and-wife architects Melissa Szpik Serrao and Jay Serrao have been practicing together for more than a quarter century. They met in the mid-1990s as architecture students at California College of the Arts and worked for the same downtown San Francisco firm before founding their own design and architectural firm in 1998. In 2007, the couple bought an urban infill lot in Sacramento’s Land Park neighborhood, walkable to a number of nearby amenities. A move of their practice and family followed (Serrao is a Sacramento native). With an urban site, they felt it was important to address the street, but also focus inward to create privacy. The office, which is a more public space, is oriented toward the north and faces the street. The bedrooms and living areas, which are more private, open to the rear and the south where the natural Delta breeze cools the rooms. The home’s signature element, a decidedly modern butterfly roofline, is visually stunning but also creates a practical solution for filling the spaces with more natural light. “It’s really a functional form, but an aesthetic nod to modernism and midcentury and other things we find joyful,” says Szpik Serrao.