Second floor terraces and sunscreens provide views and shade in this suburban setting. The east side of the second floor is the Master wing and a center bridge connects it to the kid’s wing on the west. A large formal foyer celebrates the entry and opens up to the living, dining, kitchen and family rooms all focused on the rear garden. The house is 6,200 SF of livable space, plus garage and basement gallery for a total of 9,200 SF. We developed a planning module based on a 6-foot square room size and a 6-foot wide connector called an interstitial space for hallways, bathrooms, stairs and mechanical, which keeps the rooms pure and uncluttered. We engineered the house to be smart which not only looks modern but acts modern every aspect of user control is simplified to a digital touch button, whether lights, shades, blinds, HVAC, communication, audio, video, or security. We could tell a story of how the house is built in terms of the constructability, structure and enclosure, with a nod to Japanese wood construction in the method in which the siding is installed and the exposed interior beams are placed in the double height space. We wanted to construct a house that is smart and efficient in terms of construction and energy, both in terms of the building and the user. The angular form of the house is a result of the family’s program, the zoning rules, the lot’s attributes, and the sun’s path. The house floor plan is derived by pushing and pulling the house’s form to maximize the backyard and minimize the public front yard while welcoming the sun in key rooms by rotating the house 45-degrees to true north. The home is an experiment in transparency and solid form removing borders and edges from outside to inside the house, and to really depict “flowing and endless space”. The design looks forward in terms of how people live today. The design objective was to build a house for a couple recently married who both had kids from previous marriages. Photo credit: Scott McDonald Hedrich Blessing Microsoft Media Center installation of the Year, 2008: (automated shades, radiant heating system, and lights, as well as security & sound). Landscape design by Bernard Trainor: (see “Concrete Jungle” in April 2014 edition of Dwell magazine). Natural materials predominate, with fir ceilings, limestone veneer fireplace walls, anigre veneer cabinets, fir sliding windows and interior doors, bamboo floors, and concrete patios and walks. A previous den addition provided the perfect spot for a large master ensuite bath and walk-in closet. The existing bedroom wing has been re-configured on the interior, changing three small bedrooms into two larger ones, and adding a guest suite in part of the original garage. New additions at the back of the house add several “sliding” wall planes, where interior walls continue past full-height windows to the exterior, complimenting the typical Eichler indoor-outdoor ceiling and floor planes. A wall-to-wall skylight illuminates the north wall of the kitchen/family room. An interior glass clerestory separates the kitchen and livingroom for sound control. Cantilevered steel frames support wood roof beams with eaves of up to ten feet. The shed roof floats on a continuous glass clerestory with eight foot transom. The rebuilt entertainment wing was enlarged 50% and covered with a low-slope reverse-shed roof sloping from eleven to thirteen feet. The original L-shaped plan allowed the living/ dining/ kitchen wing to be completely re-built while retaining the shell of the bedroom wing virtually intact. This project is part tear-down, part remodel.
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