With a 0.6-acre waterfront site abutting another half-acre parcel they owned, they could have built a residence of almost any size. Instead, they prioritized creating an intimate family compound with the existing guest cottage on the neighboring parcel, a shared garage, and a boathouse. “They didn’t want the house to dominate the land,” Marcus says.

Naturally Planned

Designed by Marcus and MGa project architect Robyn Bell Gentile, AIA, the 4,820-square-foot home intricately weaves together stone, steel, and wood assemblies in a manner that both showcases New England craftsmanship and merges with the landscape when viewed from the water. The hand-blended mixture of 6-inch-thick granite from three local quarries cladding the structure’s main and walkout levels emulates the site’s mottled stone seawall. The upper level is clad with nickel-gap siding, painted a color that draws from the granite veneer and the dark browns, greens, and grays of the surrounding trees and lichen.

Exposed Douglas fir glulam rafters grace the home’s flat roof and run continuously from outside to in, a length of approximately 30 feet. Zinc painted on the cut ends helps the wood resist decay while insulation above the ceiling and collars at the fascia limit thermal bridging and air and water infiltration. Marcus says his firm aimed to “build a house that would, through its quality of construction, sustain itself naturally.”

The emphasis on timelessness continues inside, starting with a compressed entry walled with large-format granite masonry and inspired by the slot canyons of the Southwest. “You come into a dark and rich space of nooks and crannies that’s low and lit by a northern oriented stair,” Marcus says. An overhead black steel beam bridging the stone corridor frames the awaiting vignette: “You come into the atrium and everything opens up.”

Here, a double-height kitchen sits at a notched inset of the floor plan and faces the neighboring cottage, fostering connection and inviting in natural light. The volume of the space then closes again, with a shiplapped interior wall of the second-level primary suite bowing the ceiling height of a dining area and great room, before rising at the glazed rear elevation to reveal an unobstructed view of the lake—thanks to a 24-foot-long steel moment frame. “It’s very sequential in a dramatic way,” says Marcus, who was influenced by the compression and release of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Robie House entry.

The Art of The Craft

The quality of light at water’s edge dictated the choice of natural materials and expert craftsmanship for interior finishes. “You get a lot of light reflecting off the water that, in turn, catches the walls, floors, and ceilings of the house,” he explains. “It makes drywall a disaster because light that comes in at a shallow angle will show any imperfection.” During construction, the architects carted prospective selections—tiles, granite, paint colors—to the site to gauge their appearance and character in the setting.

Using thin profiles where possible helps convey the seamless effect, while preserving material. For instance, those walls of subtly shimmery granite throughout the lower level may look like full blocks, but the stone is only a 1½-inch-thick veneer. Robyn credits the expertise of the mason, a repeat MGa collaborator, for “arranging the pieces to have the right amount of depth to catch the shadows from the light.”

Douglas fir glulam beams, ceiling slats, and wall panels warm the white oak flooring, while custom furniture in rift-sawn walnut adds visual interest. Each meeting of wood, stone, and steel members is a meticulously detailed work of art.

A glazed stairwell provides soft northern light, which filters to multiple floors via glass railing panels and open risers. The black steel mono stringer appears to tie into the house’s exposed steel structure, Robyn says, despite being an independent component. The floating granite treads reflect light and are more slip-resistant than wood treads, Marcus notes—an important consideration for a lake house where people often roam in socks. Similarly supporting the lifestyle, an east entrance on the foundation level grants direct access from the lake into a cabana area, complete with a sauna and facilities for showering, changing, and laundry.

This level also comprises a wine storage and tasting room, whose design Marcus unapologetically gleaned from the famed wine cellar of The French Laundry in Napa Valley. The tasting room walks out to a patio, bathing the space in eastern light.

The architects hope the Cove House, completed in the fall 2023, embodies for its owners what Bruce Springsteen might have envisioned when writing the song “My Beautiful Reward.” “That’s a concept that we followed,” Marcus says, “in trying to create an environment that they’re going to enjoy living in for the rest of their lives.”

Cove House

Lakes Region, New Hampshire

Architect: Marcus Gleysteen, AIA, partner in charge; Robyn Bell Gentile, AIA, principal/project architect, Marcus Gleysteen Architects, Boston

Builder: Tony Bourque, Burpee Hill Construction, Sunapee, New Hampshire

Interior furnishings: Nanette Chandler, Brookline, Massachusetts

Landscape architect: Greg Grigsby and Chris Kessler, Gradient Landscape Architects, New London, New Hampshire

Cabinetmaker: Matt Knittle, MK Wood Works, Enfield, New Hampshire

Architectural metalwork: Chris Aubrey, Modern Metal Solutions, Hudson, New Hampshire

Furniture maker: Blissmade, Dunbarton, New Hampshire

Mason: Stone Mountain Masonry, Belmont, New Hampshire

Painter: Lambert Coatings, Lempster, New Hampshire

Project size: 4,820 square feet

Site size: 0.6 acre

Construction cost: Withheld

Photography: Trent Bell

Key Products

Appliances: Wolf (range); Best (kitchen hood); Cove (dishwasher); Sub-Zero (refrigerator/freezer); Sharp (microwave oven); Tuzio (towel warmer); Electrolux (washer/dryer)

Bathtub: Kohler

Ceiling: Clear vertical grain Douglas fir

Cladding: TruExterior, natural granite veneer

Countertops: Wicked White quartzite (kitchen); Royal Danby (bathrooms); Colorquartz pewter (powder room); Ann Sacks Terrazzo Renata (wet bar)

Doors/windows: Duratherm (entry door, glass doors, windows); Rocky Mountain Hardware (entry hardware); Simpson Door Co. (passage door, garage); Emtek (interior door hardware)

Faucets: Dornbracht (kitchen, powder room, primary bathroom); Grohe (secondary bathroom); California Faucets (powder room); Hansgrohe (shower)

Fireplace: Granite (great room); Ortal (basement)

Glass: Weldwork (wine room)

Flooring: White oak; black slate tile (entry); porcelain tile (lower level)

HVAC: Dayus (bathroom grilles)

Lighting, exterior: Tech Lighting (recessed); Modern Forms (sconces, step lights)

Lighting, interior: WAC Lighting (recessed); Juno (recessed)

Sinks: Julien (kitchen); MTI Baths (primary bathroom); Kohler (secondary bathrooms)

Skylight: VELUX

Tile: Ann Sacks (primary and secondary bathrooms)

Toilet: TOTO

Wine racks: Vigilant

The post Case Study: Cove House by Marcus Gleysteen Architects appeared first on Residential Design.

“There’s a dusty silver shingle language and material, a lot of times kind of agricultural,” Lisa says. “The light is magical and strong and changes quickly. You see weather coming in. These shingled buildings are a perfect reflector of that weather and landscape.” Traditional Cape Cod houses also have white trim and corner boards that outline the house, probably because paint was required to maintain those architectural elements, she says. “There was a technical reason for these drops of white on the buildings. We have very different technological abilities and sealants available now.”

This summer house in Orleans, on Cape Cod, engages with all those muses. Owned by a couple with twins, it looks due east across the Atlantic on a swell of land that has been in the client’s family for about a hundred years. He had built a Shingle-Style summer house there in the early 2000s, before he met his husband. Smaller with a big roof and conventional builder details, it had double-hung windows and a large gathering space with a fireplace. After their son and daughter arrived, the couple was seeking more privacy with the addition of a separate guest area. Building on the history of the site and house, their goal was to make a bigger, more permanent place for their family. 

For Lisa and Alan, it was an opportunity to take the existing house in a more dynamic direction while preserving the financial investment, materials, and memories that the building already embodied. “It felt to us as though there was a built-in underpinning or awareness of the history of Cape Cod and the family’s love of this magical place,” she says. “They really wanted the house to feel like it was part of old Cape Cod vernacular, with huge roof forms and stark gable forms against the sky, and then also Modernist, with large panes of glass. We thought hard about the architectural history of that place, and the project developed from that.”

Shingle Minded

Occupying a 19th-century brick warehouse that holds their studio and JIG DesignBuild workshop, GOA is deeply interested in technology and craft. Their experiments in carving, casting, stacking, and laminating all inform their design work, which they describe as “thinking through making.” That approach was familiar to both clients—one leads design for a major global retail brand and the other manages design for a well-known exercise company. “They got things quickly and their opinions were fantastic,” says Lisa.

Another tenet of the firm’s work is creative reuse and adaptation to combat construction’s environmental toll. Here they kept the original foundation, roof ridge, and as much of the framing as they could, donating materials that could not be reused. The long axis of the bar-shaped house is oriented north-south, and an existing garage bumps out on the north. 

Preserving the foundation and roof ridge meant that the house’s width and height were pretty much set, though the roof forms were enlarged and the foundations were surgically extended to the south, west, and north to get the footprint they needed. Public spaces along the main floor plan face east toward the Atlantic Ocean. At the west-facing entryway, a fireplace wall hides the dining room behind it. To the right is the living room; it shares a fireplace wall with the screened porch that extends into the backyard. To the left of the entry is the kitchen with a lounge area, plus a powder room and a kids’ bath.

Extending the house by 30 feet on the north made room for two kids’ bedrooms. Where the land falls away, this addition rests on a plinth and a trio of canted steel columns, forming a bridge with a carport and service zone below. A large glass monitor in the kids’ volume created an expansion point under the widened roofline. It echoes a giant monitor in the second-floor primary suite and another on the above-garage guest quarters, which has its own covered entrance off the front porch. 

With its deep, angular roof, the two-bedroom guest suite reads as a separate building. “Cape Cod has little compounds, usually old barns,” Lisa says. “We wanted a collection of smaller forms, so it feels a bit villagey. We kept some of the roof forms but had to creatively create space by adding big dormers.” In a twist on form following function, the strong silhouettes evoke the familiar sight of roofscapes pressed against the sky. “It’s hard to overstate how aware you are of the sky when you’re on Cape Cod,” Lisa says. “It’s a really windswept, narrow spit of land way out in the Atlantic. The reading of buildings against the sky is an important experience. We had the opportunity to make shaved or refractive forms against the sky.”

The meticulous application of shingle cladding renders them as taut, abstract forms. The shingles come together in a miter joint at the corners, and their 2-inch overlap minimizes surface interruptions. “There’s not meant to be any architectural pointing out of these joints,” Lisa says. “To get that done technically required incredibly good craftsmanship, and we were fortunate to have had a crackerjack builder, Cregg Sweeney.” 

Its aesthetic subtlety belies the rigor required to achieve this effect. “The exterior is all Alaskan yellow cedar shingles, which overlap in alternating fashion going up the corner,” Cregg says. “Taking the shingles up and around and across the roof required us to bring all the levels of shingling up at the same time, to align all four sides and wrap it over the roof. That was definitely a process.” At the top of the canted chimneys, a zinc-coated, louvered air intake echoes the shingle dimensions.

Tucked In

The interiors play to Cape Cod’s distinctive light. A broad front door floats between large glass panels that admit views through the house to the Atlantic. Along the back, pocketing lift/slide doors, ranging from 10 to 15 feet wide, open the living room, dining room, and TV room to a terrace that runs the length of the house. Pyramidal ceilings in the dining room and living room are awash in light from conventional skylights installed to hide the frame. “What we like to do, especially in this pyramidal ceiling form we made here, is to bring the sheetrock inboard of the skylight frame, so you can’t even really tell there’s glass there,” Lisa says. “This gives the room an abstract quality of light and hides all the bells and whistles you need to put skylights in.”

Lined in maple hardwood paneling and casework and hickory floors, the interior feels warm and bright. The architects preserved the dining room’s existing brick fireplace but parged it with white cement and added a black cleft slate hearth. In the living room they designed a board-formed concrete fireplace that shares a chimney with a fireplace in the enlarged screened porch.

Furnishings are integral to the floor plans and fit-outs. While the architects don’t always design furniture for projects, they do draw up furniture plans early on to determine the most comfortable places for clients to sit and what they will see from those vantage points. In this case, the firm designed and fabricated the outdoor cypress benches and an indoor dining table that’s paired with Carl Hansen chairs. Their design for the colorful Carl Hansen chair cushions in the TV room was inspired by a trip to Japan. “Alan and I had done a project there and were seeing all these really thin mats put onto chairs and surfaces, adding different layers,” Lisa says. The orange patterned mats are part of a playful color palette that included the kids’ rooms, where alcoves snugged into the roof slope are lacquered in teal, yellow, pale blue, and gray. “It’s a modern eclectic vibe; we were interested in some color and not all one period of furniture,” she says. “The clients had a lot of fun with this conversation too. What will be comfortable, a bit unexpected, and bring life to different areas of the house?”

Tucked inside its wide roof, the primary suite is the sole second-story space, giving it the gift of privacy and views. On the gable end, the Zen-like bathroom is meant to feel weathered. A wall of painted, pre-weathered cedar provides a dark tonal contrast to the maple vanity and teak shower floor, which extends to an outdoor shower that looks out over the pool and ocean. Thin strips of marble in a syncopated pattern lend a reflective surface behind the vanity. “It was complicated dimensionally to get everything under the existing roof height,” Lisa says. The winding, skylit stairwell has a secret quality, she adds. “When you finally get upstairs, there’s a real privacy to the space.” 

Design work continued outdoors, where a tall, board-formed concrete retaining wall makes a level surface for the pool and lawn—a place for the twins to run around and kick a ball. Stepping stones across the pool lead to a seating area and firepit. Supported from below on stilts, the platform sits among scrub pines and provides long views of the ocean and Cape Cod’s quintessential beauty. 

“The clients are exacting people and have a great design eye; they seem to use every bit of the house and love entertaining here,” Lisa says. “When the house was pretty well along, the client commented, ‘I think you guys are working toward a new Modernist vernacular for Cape Cod.’ It was good to hear it was landing in a way that the house felt settled and was talking to its neighbors but not trying to reiterate the older houses around it.” Indeed, while the design honors the history and meaning of the site, it is also a poetic expression of how vernacular buildings can quietly change over time, without losing their sense of place. 

Nauset Beach House 

Orleans, Massachusetts

Architect: Elizabeth Gray, FAIA, principal in charge; Alan Organschi, principal in charge; Parker Lee, design director; Jack Wolfe, project manager, GOA Architecture, New Haven, Connecticut 

Builder: Cregg Sweeney, LLC, Orleans, Massachusetts

Furniture: Dan Kazer, fabrication director, JIG, GOA

Structural engineer: Jacobson Structures, Deep River, Connecticut

Civil engineer: Ryder & Wilcox, South Orleans, Massachusetts

Landscape: Crossroads Landscape & Pools, Orleans

Project size: 4,500 square feet

Site size: 0.62 acre

Construction cost: Withheld

Photography: David Sundberg/ESTO

Key Products

Cabinetry: Maple

Cladding: Alaskan yellow cedar shingles

Cooking vent hood: Sirius Range Hoods

Cooktop: Miele

Dishwasher: Bosch

Dishwasher drawer: Fisher & Paykel

Entry doors: Artisan Builders / D-Line

Exterior lighting: WAC, Bega

Faucets: Dornbracht

Fireplace: Board-formed concrete

Flooring: Hickory

Grill, built-in: Röshults

Hardware, cabinetry: Integrated finger pulls

Icemaker: Sub-Zero

Interior lighting: Sonneman, Lightexture, Lightyears, Bover, OVUUD, David Weeks, Big Ass Fans

Lighting control: Lutron

Millwork and trim: Fry Reglet

Ovens: Miele

Passage doors: d line

Refrigerator: Sub-Zero

Roofing: Alaskan yellow cedar shingles

Sinks: Kohler, Nameeks

Toilets: Duravit

Tubs: Kohler

Washer/dryer: LG

Window wall systems: Quantum Windows & Doors

Windows: LAMILUX

The post Case Study: Nauset Beach House by GOA Architecture appeared first on Residential Design.

That’s where all semblance of the original Italianate architecture disappears, lost over decades of innumerable renovations. “It was chopped up into three or four different apartments,” says Mark Peters, AIA, principal at the local firm Studio Dwell Architects, which oversaw the three-story, 6,371-square-foot house’s renovation and expansion. Multiple door openings and staircases had been added in, and the interiors were in rough shape.

The dissonance between the exterior and interior, however, didn’t faze the home’s owners, a family with two young children. They were committed to preserving the integrity of the historical façade, but they wanted an open and light-filled interior with modern elements and amenities. With little love lost, the house was gutted, save for portions of the original brick sidewalls and wooden floors, which would need reinforcing.

Bright Refresh

Following 14 months of construction, the new interior is light and minimalist. White oak flooring, millwork, soffits, and open-riser stairs intermingle with a custom maple breakfast counter and cabinets, countertops, and the kitchen hood finished in different sheens of white. The neutral-color materials provide a foil to the wall expanses of exposed original Chicago common brick, pressure-washed to reveal their rich texture and yellow/tan, red/orange, and black composition. “We wanted to limit the palette so that the concept came through cleaner and felt lighter,” Mark says.

Radiant floor heating and cooling free the walls of utilities. To bring water service to a first-floor wet bar, Studio Dwell cleverly hid pipes in a wall-mounted chase clad in white oak that integrates with floating white cabinets in a discreet, geometric arrangement. “In rehab situations,” Mark says, “you often have to make field decisions and come up with design elements on the spot.”

Bringing in Light

The modern interior isn’t the only surprise behind the façade. The 22-foot-wide home has an astonishing 80-foot depth, revealed in dramatic effect by its open floorplan. As typical for the neighborhood, the site is approximately 25 feet wide. “It sits on the property line on one side and has 3 feet of clearance on the other side,” Mark says. Neighboring houses continue this spacing, allowing each home to stand detached, but limiting opportunities for daylight to enter along their length.

Consequently, achieving the light-filled space that the client envisioned was one of the project’s biggest challenges. Because no new openings would be made to the preserved northwest façade, the daylight would have to come primarily from the building’s rear, southeast elevation. A three-story, glazed curtain wall paired with an open, double-height space between the first and second levels allows daylight to reach deep into these lower two floors.

A Rear Retreat

A deteriorating three-car garage situated against the back property line provided the footprint for additional square footage. Studio Dwell rebuilt the structure as a two-car garage and then topped it with a fitness room, another item on the owners’ wish list. Similar to the main house’s rear elevation, the fitness room features full-height windows with black mullions. “They wanted to have this transparent, visual connection between the fitness room and the house,” Mark says.

An enclosed two-story breezeway with a glazed curtain wall ties the two structures physically and visually together. The glass expanses are juxtaposed with exterior wall planes of Chicago common brick, which also complement the brick cladding of neighboring houses. This more utilitarian brick was often used on the side and rear elevations of houses, Mark explains, while the more architectural brick was reserved for the façade. 

Studio Dwell found a manufacturer that made a modern common brick, with hollowed cores for rebar, and had different color combinations mocked up. Ultimately, a composition of roughly 75% yellow/tan, 5% red/orange, and 20% black best enhanced the black curtain wall and window frames and the surrounding existing brick. “It feels like the addition was a continuation,” Mark says, “or something already existing.”

The breezeway provides protection from the elements, as well as a gallery for the owners’ artwork collection, an additional source of daylight for the interior, and a third wall for a courtyard retreat nestled between the house and garage. For its location in a city of millions, the courtyard, complete with a reflecting pond, feels surprisingly intimate due to its careful siting from the neighboring house. “There is a good sense of privacy … because the angles are played with so that nobody can get straight views,” Mark says.

Preserving the historical structure was the project’s most sustainable accomplishment, Mark believes. “It’s much cheaper and easier sometimes to start new,” he says. “But when you can save a building that is almost 140 years old, that’s fantastic.”

House on the Park

Chicago, Illinois

Architect/Interior Designer/Landscape Architect: Mark Peters, AIA, principal in charge; David Pierson, project manager, Studio Dwell, Chicago

Builder: Fettner Construction, Highwood, Illinois

Structural Engineer: Rockey Structures, Chicago

Project Size: 6,371 square feet

Site Size: 3,485 square feet

Construction Cost: Withheld

Photography: Marty Peters Photography

Key Products

Appliances: Wolf (range); Broan (vent hood); Miele (oven, warmer drawer, speed oven); Fisher & Paykel (dishwasher); Thermador (refrigerator); LG (washer/dryer)

Cabinetry: White lacquer; high gloss enamel; solid maple island tabletop (kitchen); Häfele (hardware); white oak veneer panel (built-ins)

Ceiling and soffit: White oak veneer panels; drywall

Cladding: Bricks, Inc.

Countertops: Solid surface

Doors/Windows: Fleetwood; LaCantina (folding); VELUX (skylight); Omnia (interior door hardware); SOSS (hinges); existing (entry doors and hardware)

Faucets: Grohe (kitchen); Dornbracht (primary bathroom); Hansgrohe (controls & faucets)

Flooring: Polished concrete (first floor); 7-inch white oak plank (second and third floors)

HVAC: Whole-house HEPA filter and energy-recovery ventilation system; Broan (bathroom ventilation)

Lighting, exterior: WAC Lighting, Delta, Tech Lighting

Lighting, interior: Juno (downlights); Lutron (controls), Lightology

Paints and stains: Benjamin Moore

Sinks: Ruvati (kitchen); ADM and Duravit (bathrooms)

Toilet: TOTO; Viega (flush plates)

Tub: Lacava (primary bathroom); Signature (filler)

Vanities: ADM, Duravit

The post Case Study: House on the Park by Studio Dwell appeared first on Residential Design.

Wittman Estes was hired to remedy those conditions while preserving the original front of the house. But the owners were also thinking about their community. Like many major U.S. cities, Seattle has a chronic shortage of affordable housing. In this North Capitol Hill neighborhood composed mostly of single-family homes, they decided to create an ADU they could rent out to creatives. The full basement lent itself to such an arrangement, but it, too, would need structural interventions that brought in more natural light and a gracious way of getting in from the backyard. “They felt an ethical obligation, I think, to give something back by providing more housing,” says Matt Wittman, AIA. “More than a financial need, they felt a social responsibility to create additional units for people who want to be in the city and face challenges living in these historic neighborhoods.”

Another of their values was to preserve and reuse the original materials whenever they could. Dowbuilt Construction was on board with this “slower,” more intentional way of building, which meant deconstructing and labeling items and letting decisions unfold over time. “Seattle seems to be a city of tearing down and building new,” Matt says. “I had never worked on a Craftsman house, so this was new territory. I was looking to some of those European precedents for making modern insertions within a historic fabric, such as how to blend the dark colors so it feels like everything fits together.”

Old to New

What transpired was a gradation of almost original rooms on the street-facing side of the house, to completely new spaces overlooking the backyard. Nevertheless, the architects addressed the front by taking apart and rebuilding the failing front porch, bringing it into proportion with the rest of the house. The taller, wider porch has a gabled roof that extends as a carport; double posts, rafter tails, and built-in seating and storage give it a fresh look that abstracts its Craftsman character.

Inside, the remodel builds on the virtually untouched living room at the front of the house, with its dark-stained oak trim and floors. A bar area off the living room starts the transition from old to new. There, Matt and his team partially dismantled and reassembled a storage cabinet, leaving the section closest to the living room intact, reconstructing the middle part using the old pieces, and adding new elements next to the kitchen. “It was a classic Craftsman built-in, but the new part is configured to hold the owners’ music equipment, art, and storage needs,” he says. 

Major transformations were saved for the gutted back of the house. To improve the flow, storage cabinets and a wall subdividing the kitchen and seating area were removed to create a larger kitchen that opens to a lounge and a dining area with built-in window seating. The kitchen—a combination of dark painted cabinetry and quarter-sawn walnut upper cabinets with an ebony stain—ties into the home’s existing deep, rich palette, while a new terrazzo floor and brass accents bring the sparkle. 

As an antidote to the Craftman’s inward gaze, Matt designed modern bay windows and opened the entire back wall to the rear yard. There, a 20-foot-long fold-and-pivot glazed door system, installed within a steel moment frame, lets the occupants spill out to a new porch and down to the private garden and back lane.

While the second story also has a distinct interior presence, it is now tuned to the outside world. Matt made sure of that by reallocating former storage space to a primary bath that opens to an inviting deck and sauna above the backyard. “One of the prompts of the design brief was to retain the exterior building envelope and work within that,” Matt says. “It was a fun exercise in how to make it compact and feel luxurious.” In the floor-plan shuffle, another former storage room between the primary bedroom and front yoga room now serves as the primary closet. A second bedroom and bath are across the hall, which also opens to the deck.

Recycled and Reused

Turning their attention to the ADU, the architects found they could work with the basement’s 8-foot ceilings. However, to create discrete entrances on opposite sides of the main house, part of the foundation wall was cut away at the rear corner and replaced with floor-to-ceiling windows and two glazed doors. They open to an excavated private patio and stairs to the backyard and laneway, bringing light into the living space. “The ADU feels larger than it is because of the view to the sunken garden,” Matt says. “Like the upstairs, we were using the existing footprint.” To reduce sound transfer between floors, the builders installed rigid insulation and a sound-dampening anti-vibration assembly between the fir joists. Finish materials are elegant but economical. The kitchen countertop is the same Absolute Black granite as in the main house, but the cabinets are dark-stained maple and the compact bath features simple 4×4 white tile, a soaking tub, and a reused wall cabinet from upstairs. 

“The owners were very attached to the materiality of the house and wanted to honor and reuse whatever they could,” Matt says. “Our contractor documented and preserved a lot of things as they were deconstructed, and framing was reused whenever possible.” A cast-in-place concrete retaining wall holds space for the sunken patio and entryway. “It’s a low-tech version of rammed concrete,” Matt says. “We made 2-foot lifts, put in stone, let it dry, and put in the next lift, which created horizontal lines. It was an efficient way of creating texture.” The ADU entry stairs are made from the same wood as the decks: Dinizia excelsa hardwood repurposed from a 40-year-old highway sound barrier in Chicago. Tying the work together, the exterior was painted in Benjamin Moore Kendall Charcoal, and windows in the renovation areas were rebuilt with energy-efficient glazing.

This project embodies the firm’s philosophy that landscape must be integral to architecture, rather than a budget afterthought. Matt and co-partner Jody Estes, who began their careers working in horticulture and landscape design, aim to create ecologically rich environments by considering the landscape first and treating the architecture as an extension of that. In this already lush backyard, a wisteria was preserved and retrained on a new trellis, and a mature birch tree was nursed back to health.  

With all three levels now connected to the backyard and Peach Court, the house and its garden have a role to play in the quality of life, not just for the owners but for some lucky renters navigating a tough housing market.

Peach Court Garden ADU

Seattle

Architect/interior designer/landscape designer: Matt Wittman, AIA, and Jody Estes, principals in charge; Mariana Gutheim and Alex Hale, designers, Wittman Estes, Seattle

Builder: Dowbuilt, Seattle

Structural engineer: J. Welch Engineering, Seattle

Project size: 3,349 square feet (main house), 581 square feet (ADU)

Site size: 6,160 square feet

Construction cost: $495 a square foot

Photography: Rafael Soldi

Key Products

Cabinetry: Dowbuilt, Warmington & North

Cooking ventilation/Cooktop: Bosch

Countertops: Absolute Black granite, PentalQuartz

Decking: Anthology Wood

Dishwasher: Bosch

Doors: Signature Door (entry), Panoramic Doors (fold-and-pivot rear door system)

Faucets: Grohe, Lacava, Kohler

Flooring: Pioneer Millworks (white oak), North American Terrazzo

Lighting: Dals Lighting (exterior), A-N-D, Sossego, Cedar & Moss, Santa & Cole

Lighting control systems: Forbes & Lomax

Ovens: Bosch

Paints, stains, coatings: Benjamin Moore, Sherwin-Williams

Refrigerator: Bosch, Sub-Zero (drawer)

Sinks: American Standard, Duravit, Decolav

Tile: Cascade Stoneworks, Fireclay

Toilets: Duravit

Tubs: Aquatica, TOTO

Windows: Quantum Windows & Doors

Wood stove: Morso

The post Case Study: Peach Court Garden ADU by Wittman Estes appeared first on Residential Design.

Despite the project’s generous size—17,500 square feet on 2.6 acres—the clients’ program could have consumed “double” the space, says Scott. “It’s really more like a museum than a house—all steel, big glass, concrete. There’s no wood in the whole thing.” Durable Mesabi granite, travertine, brass, and bronze round out the palette. 

The wooded waterfront site and the clients’ mandate to preserve trees drove much of the design’s shape, which leans to organic forms rather than a “Miesian” box, Scott notes. The forms cantilever and hover over water; key indoor spaces open directly to outdoor gathering areas. 

The word Ammamma means grandmother, reflecting the link between the owners’ past and their hopes for the future in their family home.  Says Scott, “Every piece of this house is very meaningful.”

Ammamma Legacy Residence

Dallas

Architect: Specht Novak, Austin, Texas

Builder: Escobedo Group, Buda, Texas

Landscape designer: Hocker, Dallas

Interior designer: Salon

Lighting designer: Orsman Design

Structural engineering: Strandberg Engineering

Project size: 17,500 square feet

Site size: 2.6 acres

Renderings: VER

The post Parti Shot: Ammamma Legacy Residence by Specht Novak appeared first on Residential Design.

Simple as a child’s drawing, it sits on rolling terrain overlooking the town of Overbrook, in the Tallgrass Prairie region of eastern Kansas. The land is dotted with broken limestone, much of it containing fossils of sea creatures from the inland sea that covered this area eons ago. Built plainly out of southern yellow pine and corrugated metal siding, the structure was solid but not square. To support the insertion of a bedroom, bath, loft, kitchen, and dining/living area, builders Delaney Moore and Caleb Aldrich added shims and horizontal blocking, creating a frame-within-a-frame, and then lined the walls with plywood. “We made a decision that we wouldn’t cut any of the primary frame members,” says Steve, FAIA. “The window sizes had to fit within the stud spacing. Originally, we intended to have larger windows on the north, but this is tornado alley; we wanted the building to be as stiff as possible.”

Twenty feet wide and 24 feet long, the barn had a slatted crib wall that divided the interior in half lengthwise along its east-west axis. This lightweight wall also drew a line between two different types of construction. “The south half had sliding barn doors on the west and east and a dirt floor for trucks to drive through and deliver hay,” Steve says. “The north half had a concrete floor used primarily for corn storage, but also animals. That half also had 24-inch stud spacing and 1×6 yellow pine sheathing that ran horizontally, which made the north half stiffer. The south half had 4-foot stud spacings, like it was used simply for weather protection.”

Every inch of this modest building was used to make comfortable living quarters. An open living room and dining nook now occupy the south half of the old barn. Removing parts of the crib wall, the architect created two doorways to the northern half, which contains a kitchen and bedroom with a bath between them. The two new walls subdividing this section also support a loft deck made of salvaged yellow pine timbers. Accessed from a ladder in the living room, it is just big enough for a queen-sized bed.

Humble Ply

For two people who like to cook and entertain, a functional kitchen with full-size appliances was priority. The west half of the roughly 4-by-9-foot kitchen contains a sink and dishwasher and a set of deep drawers. A compact European washer/dryer is stacked on the south side with a set of deep drawers above, and the east wall contains pantry drawers and a combination high-speed convection and microwave oven. The east side of the kitchen also has an Italian four-burner gas range, countertop, and refrigerator. “It’s ergonomic and easy to use—a powerful little kitchen,” Steve says.

Aside from some fancy appliances, the interior finishes are rudimentary or recycled. “Initially the plywood was to be a substrate for live-edge pine planks we expected to have, but the ply was so beautiful and simple we decided to just stop at that point,” Steve says. “We used southern yellow pine everywhere, including on the floor, to keep the tradition alive.” One exception is the kitchen and bathroom casework, which is made of Baltic birch plywood. A family friend, Navid Jones, built the dining nook out of cherry wood from a felled tree on the couple’s city property. And most of the bathroom surfaces came from Recycled Surfaces, a business Steve used to own. The countertops, floor, and shower walls are clad in a combination of recycled glass and porcelain.  

The exterior, too, retains its beautifully utilitarian flavor. Silvery blue with a polka dot–patterned patina, the original corrugated metal siding looks like something you might see on a building in Marfa’s West Texas landscape. That and the original roof were left intact, although a new Cor-Ten roof floats on sleepers above the old one. A year after construction ended, Steve added front and back porches, along with dry-stacked stone walls to level the ground around the house. “I watched Andy Goldsworthy build walls in an art project at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art and decided I could emulate what his crew was doing,” Steve says. “I had all this rock that was dug up when we were excavating for the sewage lagoon. I spent the summer stacking those walls and had a neighboring farmer backfill it. A year later I put all the paving stone down.” He also built window shutters from charred planking—a riff on the antique sliding doors still in place.

Light Touch

Doors and windows provide natural ventilation, but heat comes from mini-splits and a radiant concrete floor. “It was a challenge, but a lot of fun, to work around existing conditions and keep the building discreet, not flashy,” says builder Delaney. “After installing a vapor barrier and closed cell foam insulation, we hand-poured a new concrete floor, spreading it on top of the existing concrete, which created a thermal mass for heat retention.” The couple hopes to achieve net-zero energy consumption with the future addition of solar panels.

Where to run plumbing and mechanicals presented another hurdle. “Steve was brilliant with the design and drawings, but getting it all to work out logistically was a fascinating process,” says Caleb. “We cut channels in the cement pad for the plumbing and ran the electrical in the few walls we had available.”

Near the cottage, an original 1860 dry-stack limestone cellar  house—the couple dubbed it Underbrook—had been restored by previous owners. Steve added a door and window, and Caleb installed a limestone floor. “We stayed in it one night during a tornado alert,” Steve says, “but we’re trying to figure out options for adding more people; this is an interesting place to hang out for a day or so. I built the cottage’s couch and ladder so was planning to build a pair of same-design couches to sleep on. But we have a humidity issue in the hut, so we’re worried about fabrics. We’ve also designed container houses; a friend is thinking about moving to our farm in a container house south of the cellar.”

Indeed, the Overlook is well used. Steve’s family is there most weekends and holidays, whether to tend the large vegetable garden or just escape from the city. “We’re surprised by how much respite it provides. Last Saturday there were coyotes howling all night long, and it’s a whole different community of folks here,” Steve says. For this family, visits to the old farmstead keep the urban scene from feeling stale. And with its sensitive embrace of old and new, the house tells a story about Overbrook’s agricultural past.

Overbrook Overlook

Overbrook, Kansas

Architect: Steve McDowell, FAIA, BNIM, principal in charge, Kansas City, Missouri

Builder: Delaney Moore and Caleb Aldrich, dmrtisans, Kansas City, Kansas

Color/design collaborator: Beena Ramaswami, BNIM

Mechanical engineer: Tom Simpson, Introba, Kansas City, Kansas

Structural engineer: Trevor Acorn, Walter P. Moore Co., Kansas City, Missouri

Project size: 702 square feet

Site size: 78 acres

Construction cost: $242 a square foot

Photography: Kelly Callewaert

Key Products

Cabinetry: Custom Baltic birch ply by Sheldon Vogt

Ceiling fans: Ball, Modern Fan Company

Cooking ventilation: Bertazzoni

Cooktop or Range: Bertazzoni

Countertop: Recycled Surfaces 

Dishwasher: Bosch

Entry Doors, hardware, locksets: H Window

Fasteners: Spax

Faucets: Grohe

Finish Materials: Sanded ACX pine plywood from New Zealand

HVAC Systems: Carrier Mini Split, Warm Tiles Electric Radiant System

Insulation: Kansas Spray Foam

Lighting: Halo, Ikea

Outdoor grill: Big Green Egg

Ovens: GE Advantium

Paints, stains, coatings: Johnson Paste Wax

Passage doors: Menards yellow pine, Zoro hardware

Refrigerator: GE

Shower enclosure: Delta

Sinks: Kraus, EAGO

Tankless water heater: Takagi

Toilet: Dual flush Glacier Bay

Washer/dryer: Bosch

The post Case Study: Overbrook Overlook by BNIM appeared first on Residential Design.

The aptly named Double Island, one of tens of thousands in this bay that form the world’s largest freshwater archipelago, looks like a pair of lungs connected by a slim bridge of land. The Toronto-based clients purchased the island with the intention of renovating and expanding the house that stood there. Given the difficulties of barging building materials to this remote destination, Superkül was a natural choice for the project. Although the firm’s portfolio ranges from single-family homes to high-rise buildings, they especially appreciate the challenges of keeping as much of the structure as they can on adaptive reuse and renovation projects. 

“The first phase was probably the most challenging,” says partner Andre D’Elia, FRAIC.  “It would have been easier if it was a new build, and it would have been a different house. Existing conditions are both a constraint and an opportunity—you develop a creative response. How do we give this building new life? It’s more about doing interventions and keeping the character and soul of the original project. It’s challenging in that respect; there’s always a surprise when you peel back the layers.”

Edge Condition

One aspect that did give the architects full creative license was the addition of a primary suite. After exploring several expansion schemes that grew from the house’s awkward geometries, the architects abandoned that approach. They drew a linear pavilion that essentially stands on its own but tucks under a roof on the house’s east side. “We wanted to create a pavilion that lightly touched the house and hovered over the rock, oriented to the sun,” Andre says. After considering the whole landscape, “we said, this is what we need to do. We sent the clients a hand sketch, and they said, “Oh my god, yes!’”

Resting on slender piers, the pavilion is reached through a glass-enclosed bridge from the main living space. Its “box-within-a-box” design allows it to be experienced as a world unto itself, a platform from which to observe, unimpeded, the movement of sun, clouds, and storms. Floating within the steel and glass structure are white-oak-lined compartments for sleeping, bathing, and dressing, with the bedroom facing south and the en-suite bathroom and concrete freestanding bathtub facing east. Floors and ceilings cantilever beyond the wooden core, creating a clear, clean edge that keeps the focus on the sweep of landscape.

The architects saw the rectilinear design as both an antidote and complement to the angular architecture of the original structure. On both volumes, new oversized glazing shares a datum line that ties the structures together, while the pavilion’s simplicity is a foil for the cottage’s geometric complexity. “Generative juxtapositions of this kind were key to the overall architectural design,” the architects wrote. “Whereas the main cottage is clad in concrete masonry blocks that express a visual gravitational pull down toward the rock, the addition appears to levitate while the glazed link opens up entirely on both sides to create a breezeway and multiple access points into the home. Together, the two structures convey a simultaneous experience of solidity and ethereality, durability and permeability, being inside and outside.”

It’s no coincidence that the design also introduces wind and sun breaks on this extreme site. “The pavilion ties into the house, creating outdoor courtyards or shelter areas” on the south and north, Andre says. “The bridge piece that links the house with the pavilion has doors that open on both sides, so if it’s too hot on the south, they can move to the shady area on the north side, and if it’s too windy, they can get a break from the wind on the opposite patio. We wanted to keep those active uses prominent in the design.”

Breathing Room

One of the renovation goals was to accommodate visiting siblings, children, and grandchildren. The gut remodel included removing partitions, inserting larger windows, and reshaping parts of the roof to open the insular interiors. They also bumped out the footprint on the east side of the main level, near the entrance, to add a bedroom facing the water.

“We wanted to create a more unified ceiling and roof structure,” Andre says. “There were columns coming down in awkward places on the floor plan. We removed those columns and introduced steel beams to replace some of the roof structure, simplifying parts of the roof around the main entrance and liberating the main living space.”

From the entryway, a stairway on the right leads to an existing loft, now used as a TV room and office, where the roof was raised and a window added on the north side. Straight ahead, the cathedralized living space was redesigned for entertaining and views of the rocky coastline. 

The water-facing dining room on the right sits a few steps above the open kitchen and living room. Removing partitions doubled the size of the dining room, now lit with operable skylights that, along with sliding glass doors, admit cooling cross breezes. Originally, part of the dining room was sectioned to create an inglenook for the see-through fireplace between the living and dining rooms. Filling in the fireplace on the dining side and removing the walls around it simplified and opened the room’s footprint. And redesigning the wide steps between the kitchen and dining area established an informal gathering spot where grandkids can sit or play while someone is making dinner. 

“This was their oasis; they wanted to be really immersed in nature,” Andre says. The living room’s masonry walls were distilled to posts infilled with glass that takes in the landscape; small picture windows were exchanged for floor-to-ceiling windows and sliding glass doors. “It felt like the heavy roof above closed the whole thing,” Andre says. “We let it breathe a bit.”

They also raised the roof over the kitchen and removed partial walls that hemmed it in. In fact, everything in this house is new except for the concrete-block fireplace. The architects highlighted its monumental presence by exposing portions that were concealed and removing the soot. “It was a process of elimination for the fireplace,” Andre says. “The same thing with the roof. We cleaned up valleys and ridges, put a new cap on the fireplace chimney, and peeled back the roofline that partially covered it.” The entire project was a process of “preservation, subtraction, and immersion” to honor aspects of the home’s core personality, minimize unnecessary waste, and reduce the number of barge deliveries to this outer island—a journey of about 90 minutes from the mainland (though half that by boat).

The west side of the house received a new elevation with the removal of balconies and piers off the dining room and downstairs bedroom. Cutting back the dipping roofline and adding larger windows opened the northwest corner to outdoor views.  The design team also simplified the screened porch’s roofline on the southeast, behind the kitchen. Overall, “we kept the spirit of the roof but rationalized it,” Andre says. All this was done as surgically as possible by propping up the existing roof and reframing it, peeling back the layers to expose more spacious interiors. 

Downstairs are two guest bedrooms with a bath between them. Both were stripped and given larger windows. In the northwest bedroom that benefited from the streamlined elevation, a concrete block wall supporting part of the living room fireplace made a niche that the architects reclad in whitewashed knotty pine—the perfect spot for a houseguest’s suitcase. 

Soft Focus

The interior material palette imparts a sense of expansiveness in keeping with the vast natural landscape. A nod to the home’s original decor, whitewashed knotty pine figures prominently among the minimal finishes. In addition to lining the walls and ceilings of the secondary bedrooms, where it’s applied with a horizontal reveal, it also appears in the entryway and on the soaring kitchen and dining room wall, tying the two spaces together. Other ceilings and walls are skimmed in creamy plaster with a sandy stucco finish. “It softens the light and gives the ceiling a lot of depth because the microfines in the finish absorb light,” Andre says. 

Throughout, the casework is white oak. Adding to the soft-focus effect, the Bulthaup kitchen’s white laminate cabinets are paired with a mottled-gray porcelain backsplash that echoes the Georgian Bay rock and concrete block fireplace. “We tried to keep the palette very simple,” Andre says. “The only real color we have is behind the bathtub in the primary suite,” where handmade tiles supply a wavy pop of pattern facing the water.

Outside, a new steel roof resists the location’s high winds, and the concrete block was parged for uniformity between old and new. “The house had a lot of water damage from leaky windows,” Andre says. “These materials are just more durable.” The house is cooled passively through cross breezes and heated with a few in-floor baseboard units (an electrical cable on the lake floor supplies service to the island from the mainland). “The clients use the house from May to October and close it down in the winter,” Andre says. “In mid-April it still gets quite cold and sometimes there are still ice floes.” 

Bobcats were barged over to dig the septic system, and steel beams were erected with winches and chains, working from scaffolding. Given the frigid winter temperatures, construction on these islands is mostly limited to summer months; however, the crew arrived on snowmobiles to finish the interior over the winter. In a final move, the sand and gravel outside the house was scraped back to expose the rocky landscape. Gray-brown granite for the patios came from a nearby quarry and mirrors the rust-colored patterns in the island’s natural rock.

Together, the house and low-slung primary suite convey a sense of solidity and weightlessness. By recapturing interior headroom, enhancing passive ventilation, and creating transparency, the architects made the cottage more permeable to the amazing setting while increasing its durability in a daunting climate. “The clients really feel like it’s what they envisioned,” Andre says. “This is their oasis, and they wanted to feel like they’re outside. The client is always puttering in the landscape, building paths through the island, going for a swim. At night the house becomes a beacon for the island.” 

Double Island Cottage

Georgian Bay, Ontario

Architect: Andre D’Elia, partner in charge; Jennifer Esposito, project architect; Carly Kandrack, Janean Brühn, design team, Superkül, Toronto, Ontario

Builder: Moon Island Construction, Mactier, Ontario

Interior designer: Superkül

Structural engineer: Kieffer Structural Engineering, Toronto

Millwork: Chervin Kitchen & Bath, Port Carling, Ontario

Project size: 3,042 square feet

Site size: 5 acres

Construction cost: Withheld

Photography: Studio Shai Gil

Key Products

Cladding: Concrete masonry blocks

Cooktop: Gaggenau

Countertops: Caesarstone

Dishwasher: Gaggenau

Faucets: Brizo, Rubinet

Flooring: Moncer Flooring

Hardware: Hinge Hardware, Casson

Interior wall cladding: White-washed knotty pine

Kitchen: Bulthaup

Lighting: Herman Miller, Flos, Astro, Lambert & Fils, Peter Bowles, Liteline, DELTALIGHT, Artemide

Ovens: Gaggenau

Refrigerator: Gaggenau, Bosch

Sinks: Bosch, Blanco

Skylights: VELUX

Tiles: Stone Tile

Toilets: TOTO

Tub: Native Trails

Washer/dryer: Bosch

Windows and window wall systems: Schüco | Bigfoot Door

Wine refrigerator: Liebherr

The post Case Study: Double Island Cottage by Superkül appeared first on Residential Design.

Ship in a Bottle

Once a remote and forested area where the LaHave River estuary joins the North Atlantic Ocean, Upper Kingsburg traces its roots variously to native indigenous peoples, an outpost for early explorers, seasonal fishing settlements, and farmlands. Utilitarian structures are a component of its vernacular building traditions.

When the eighth Ghost gathering took place in 2006, the concept was to design and build a sizable studio and dining hall for the program. At 100-feet long, it was going to be the biggest and most commanding addition to the property, but it needed to derive its inspiration from the challenging climate and the modest origins of the place. An industrial agrarian building was a natural fit.

Brian also tapped a solution he had used for the 1999 Howard House, located on a similar waterfront, cliffside site. The “zoomorphic wedge” shape, as the firm calls it, aims its rising “head” toward the water views and its tapering “tail” toward the land. Given the constraints—budget, time, labor skills—Shobac is even more pared down in its expression than the private Howard House, and thus cleaves even closer to the firm’s goal of “an architecture in dialogue with the ordinariness of a particular place.”

Keeping the building simple was also a practical consideration, as it was to be built on a tight schedule and by hand with largely unskilled labor. “It was built in a week,” Brian recalls. “And those trusses were built in the air and done in a single day. By suppertime, the structure was up. No single piece could be more than 200 pounds. It was like building a boat in a bottle, with a ship’s hull geometry.”

“It’s passive solar, so it faces south and has a thermal mass concrete floor,” he adds. “There are high windows on the north side and big ones on the south for the Venturi effect. Finnish architect Juhani Pallasmaa said about our work that you can feel the forces of nature operating on you here. You can feel the climate—kind of like a weather station.”

One room deep with a 40-foot dining table at its center—the space served a variety of functions in its ensuing 17 years. Ghost participants gathered at the table for creative brainstorming and meals, Brian’s firm used it as a satellite office, and it functioned as a community space for events—the beating heart of the Shobac Campus.

The Homecoming

Over the years, Brian’s career and commissions have lured him all over the world. But this region has always called him back. His adult children also left for school and other experiences, but they found themselves called back here as well. Whether living and working nearby or on the mainland, Kingsburg is the family center—the homestead.

So it made sense to adapt the Shobac Studio into a home for Brian and his wife, a neuroscientist, and a locus—with that 40-foot-long table—for bringing family and friends together. Indeed, the project was a family affair, with son Matthew the project architect and daughter Renée the structural engineer.

In keeping with the firm’s belief in building just “enough house” and no more, the changes were executed with restraint. Small tweaks to the original structure include a new open deck, a reworked main entrance, and new storage and laundry facilities. A small sleeping alcove off the main living area and kitchen was retained; and an existing loft bedroom and bath is now the compact primary suite. “The alcove is the only place you don’t see the ocean,” says Brian.

Conjoining the lightly renovated double-height building is a new addition that continues the taper of the wedge shape. Viewed from overhead, you’d mistake it as a single entity, now extending 200 feet in length instead of 100 and terminating in a covered storage for firewood. From the broad sides, though, it’s obvious where the two pieces are stitched together.

The stick-built addition contains a pool, spa, and gym—ideal for keeping fit during hot summers and cold winters. “My wife wanted the pool,” Brian says. “She has always wanted a pool. She works as a stroke researcher and knows what happens when you don’t move your body.”

In the spirit of Shobac’s utopian village ideals, the new facility is available to the community, he says. And, at twice its original length, the building creates even more of a protected courtyard space in relation to the structures around it than it did before. “There’s something archetypical about that—something timeless,” he explains. “We often work with the space between buildings, like white space on a canvas.”

In transforming the Shobac Studio into his own home, the architect resisted padding it with luxurious finishes and flourishes. It merely extrudes the austerity of the original to encompass a few utilitarian amenities. Architect/critic Kenneth Frampton once called Brian’s work “banal,” he says, and he takes it as a compliment, “When you achieve the banal, it’s as if the building was always meant to be there.”

Original Building

Shobac Studio/Spa Extension

Upper Kingsburg, Nova Scotia

Architect: Brian MacKay-Lyons, FRAIC, FAIA, design lead; Matthew MacKay-Lyons, job captain, MacKay-Lyons Sweetapple Architects, Halifax, Nova Scotia

Builder: Axios Construction, Dartmouth, Nova Scotia

Structural Engineering: Renée MacKay-Lyons, Blackwell, Halifax

Mechanical and Electrical: M&R Engineering, Ltd., Halifax

Project Size: Studio and spa, 3,600 square feet; spa extension only, 1,500 square feet

Construction cost: Withheld

Photography: Matthew MacKay-Lyons

Key Products

Cladding/Roofing: Corrugated Galvalume

Decking: Hemlock

Finish materials: Cedar shiplap (pool area, sauna, bench); drywall (pool area, gym, washroom); slate tile (steam shower)

Flooring: Slate tile (pool deck, entry, steam shower, washroom); rubber floor (gym)

HVAC: Lifebreath HRV; Solstice air-to-water heat pump; radiant infloor, Price electric duct heater; Harvia (sauna heater)

Humidity Control: Desert Aire (pool dehumidication unit)

Insulation: Rockwool; XPS rigid insulation 

Lighting: RAB

Millwork/Trim: Cedar Shiplap

Windows: Aluminum

The post Case Study: Shobac Studio / Spa Extension by MacKay-Lyons Sweetapple appeared first on Residential Design.

Undaunted, the clients returned sometime later with a new property—99 acres along the Hudson River—and a fresh assignment for the firm. “The property feels like a retreat—there’s a large 1880s house, a massive pool house with a dining hall, and two guest houses,” says Brian. 

The focus for this first project was one of the guest houses—a charmless, perfunctory thing with an enviable location overlooking the river. “It’s a great project for us,” says Brian. “It’s what we’ve been doing for years—take something that’s the proportions of a shoebox, but make it the best box ever.” 

Although the footprint and basic structure of the building will remain, almost everything else will change. A polished, corrugated stainless steel skin and a new window wall system from Italy will elevate the exterior, while a reconfigured interior will turn two bedrooms into three. A new tower volume provides the “exclamation point,” as Brian calls it, and a viewing post at bird’s eye level with nearby bald eagles’ nests.

Hudson River Guest Cottage

Tivoli, New York

Project: Hudson River Guest Cottage; architect: Brian Messana and Toby O’Rorke, principals in charge; Viktor Nassili, project manager, Messana O’Rorke, New York, New York

Builder: Peggy Anderson Construction, Hudson, New York

Project size: 1,672 square feet

Site size: 99 acres

Renderings: Messana O’Rorke.

The post Parti Shot: Hudson River Guest Cottage by Messana O’Rorke appeared first on Residential Design.

They walked all seven lots, but the most intriguing one wasn’t for sale, the architect recalls. The owners had laid down some red rock gravel to suggest a building pad on a steep slope between 400-year-old, telescoping junipers that framed the much-photographed Cathedral Rock in the distance. 

“It has a Mount Fuji-esque presence in the valley,” says Wendell Burnette, FAIA. “At reverse sunset you can’t help but look at it. Here in the West we look to the East to see what’s lighting up in the cliffs. The telescoping rows of junipers told us just what to do.” Luckily for the clients, the owners had taken it off the market some months earlier but were eager to sell this steep “sleeper” plot, which also turned out to be the least expensive of those on offer. 

It presented just the kind of constraints that energize Wendell’s work. The three years he spent at the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture and his subsequent work with his mentor, Will Bruder, FAIA, instilled an appreciation for highly crafted buildings that meld with the landscape. In this case, the budget and site dictated a compact, resource-efficient house—just 1,600 square feet—that occupies the plot’s sweet spot.

Long Division

Aligning with the right-of-way protected view shed, the house is an east-west-facing bar that acts as an old-fashioned telescope trained on Cathedral Rock. Situated on the property’s high point, the house is 72-feet-long-by-21-feet-wide at its narrowest on the west, widening in 21/2-inch increments to 23 feet in the open kitchen/dining/living room that faces the mountain view. 

Even the long elevations have studied apertures that amplify the views of this stunning desert terrain, with its geological forms and striations and ever-changing hues. The entry side of the house on the west contains a carport, where a horizontal window slot frames a windshield-level slice of landscape. Six inches above the carport is the foyer—or “genkan,” as Wendell calls it—where a minimalist bench for removing shoes extends outside to form a seating wall in the entry courtyard. 

Inside, a central corridor lies on axis with the view of Cathedral Rock. Moving toward that view, it bisects three bedrooms on the south and two bathrooms and a laundry on the north before stepping up and out to the taller main living space with its giant window and mullion aligned with a gap in Cathedral Rock. The yacht-like, 9-foot-by-10-foot bedrooms (excluding the entry and closets) have a built-in desk and a horizontal window that provides a panorama of the cottonwoods and sycamores along Oak Creek, while the bathrooms on the opposite side of the hallway have higher windows for privacy that look up to the hills above the house.

Surrounded by trees, the building’s weathering steel skin seems to grow out of the reddish soil. “Cathedral Rock’s geology is hematite, which is rust,” Wendell says. The artful wrapping consists of standard size Cor-Ten sheets that overlap along the roof’s downslope and fold down on the north and south elevations to create full-height flashings. 

Given the remote location and the complexity of the angles, miters, and blind welds of the ¼-inch steel plate door and window frames, Phoenix-based builder Mark McCulloch made mockups and construction drawings on-site before having them fabricated in Phoenix. “There are no exposed fasteners anywhere on the house,” says Mark, who lived on-site in a camper van during construction. “We ended up turning the carport into a makeshift shop, doing the rough cuts for the interior panels in Phoenix and the final cuts at the house.” 

Along with steel plate windows, the Cor-Ten makes the building virtually fireproof. And its folds create shadow lines that not only help the house recede into the land but also evoke the respite of shade in a region with powerful sunlight. “We have this idea, doing houses in the desert, that it’s very comforting to work with shadow finishes,” Wendell says.  

Dark Shadows

That idea carries through to the monochromatic interior, whose floors, wall, and most of the ceilings are encased in compressed sawdust panels with a black pigment. “The interior is essentially a cabinet that fits into this Cor-Ten shell,” the architect says. Some panels are waxed and buffed, while those in wet areas are lacquered. Laid out in modules that step out toward the view at ¾-inch increments, these noir planes form concentric rectangles in the widening hallway and are highlighted when reverse sunsets throw the edges into relief. In the absence of door handles, diminutive lights in the hallway floor indicate where to push. “The dark tube pulls the view toward you,” Wendell says, culminating in “this large urban room like a Manhattan apartment, but in this landscape.”

While the kitchen is part of that “urban room,” it sits a few steps lower at the hallway level, and a raised countertop hides the sink from view. There, a perforated weathering steel side door opens to an exterior stair leading to the lower-level game room. Meticulously fitted out with a pellet stove, Irori Japanese-style fire table, and custom furniture including an L-shaped sofa/daybed and a glass-topped dining table that reflects the sky, the main living space also incorporates a movie screen that descends from the ceiling on cables. The screen is designed to float symmetrically within the window frame. In phase two, the glass will slide sideways out of view into a frame, making the living room feel like a balcony.

Even without a movie playing, “the main room is like a home theater,” Wendell says. “By day it’s about the landscape; it’s comforting to look out at it from a dim atmosphere.” To control sunlight on that east-facing telescope window during the day, a black automated shade screen rolls down in the morning and retracts at solar noon. It can be left open in winter to capture early morning sun. “It is 97 percent solid, and yet you can see the silhouette of the Sedona mountain landscape through it,” Wendell says.

Perhaps counterintuitively, the lighting plan incorporates shielded ¾-inch iGuzzini fixtures—“the most minimal light fixtures I know,” Wendell says. They’re typically dimmed to about 10 percent, a level he says provides ample but subtle light. “The surprise is that in this dark sky community, if a white room was lit, it would stand out like a supernova. Because of the dark finishes, you can sit in the room with the lights off and see the Milky Way on a moonless night. The ceiling and walls become the sky; you’re floating in this dark valley within these dark finishes.” 

For now, the couple plans to enjoy the house—along with the many hiking and biking trails within walking distance—every few months for several weeks at a time and rent it out as an Airbnb between stays. With its low-maintenance finishes and atmospheric embrace, the house suits both uses. 

“Although they didn’t overtly talk about it, part of what they wanted was to create an experience that competes in a vacation rental market that’s very competitive,” Wendell says. “I believe architecture has the ability to communicate at a visceral level and create a memorable experience, whether it’s a public building or a private residence designed to be a mini-DIY hotel. It’s highly specific to its spot on the planet. Given that we can be everywhere via our phones, I feel like luxury is being able to be here and now.” 

Telescope House

Sedona, Arizona

Architect: Wendell Burnette, FAIA, principal in charge; Brandan Siebrecht, project lead; Jared Abraham; Joby Dutton; Wendell Burnette Architects, Phoenix, Arizona

Builder and custom fabricator: Mark McCulloch, Roots Design Build, Phoenix

Interior designer: Wendell Burnette, Phoenix

Landscape architect: Arterra, Phoenix

Structural engineer: Rudow + Berry, Scottsdale, Arizona

Mechanical engineer: EKR Heating and Cooling, Glendale, Arizonia

Electrical engineer: Woodward Engineering, Tempe, Arizona

Lighting designer: Creative Designs in Lighting, Scottsdale, Arizona

Project size: 1,600 square feet

Site size: 1.13 acres

Construction cost: $900 per square foot

Photography: Jason Roehner

Key Products

Bedroom closet curtains: Holland & Sherry – Andes Mushroom

Cabinetry/Ceilings/Flooring/Wallboard: Interlam ForesColor MDF – Black

Cladding: Lapped Cor-Ten steel

Cooking vent hood: Miele

Cooktop: Samsung 30-inch induction

Countertops: Indian Premium Black Granite, Arizona Tile

Dishwasher: Bosch

Entry doors: Arcadia

Faucets: Kohler, Rotunda

Foundation: Concrete strip footing with masonry stem walls

Home theater: Da-Lite Wireline Advantage 

Indoor grill: Grillworks

Lighting control: Lutron

Lighting: Lumiere (exterior), iGuzzini Laser Blade XS

Oven: Frigidaire

Passage doors: FritsJurgens

Pellet stove: Regency GF40

Radiant heating: Schluter Ditra-Heat (bathroom floor)

Refrigerator: Sub-Zero

Roof truss system: TJI Joists

Roofing: Lapped Corten steel

Security system: ULTRALOQ

Showerhead: Delta Raincan

Sinks: Elkay, Kohler, Infinite Narrow

Sofa: Coda 2 Fabric

Toilets: Duravit

Window shading: Screen Innovations Outdoor Motorized Shade (living room)

Windows: Arcadia

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