The Lake Santeetlah Residence is a renovation of and addition to a modest forty-year old cottage on the shores of a man-made lake in western North Carolina.  Surrounded by Joyce Kilmer National Forest, the new house takes advantage of the unspoiled views of the surrounding mountains and deep waters of the lake. The second story addition raises the living spaces of the house and allows all of the newly created lower-level bedrooms direct access to and views of the lake. The dark palette of the black-oiled shou sugi ban siding and the forest green windows recede into the forested setting of the lake as well as providing a low maintenance home that will hopefully last for future generations.

The Chain Bridge Residence is a complete gut renovation of a ranch home from the 1970s in a northern Virginia suburb. The house had wonderful existing “bones” and sat against a lovely, wooded ravine that runs down to the Potomac River.  Our initial goal was to “strip” the house back – remove the overgrown landscaping on the outside of the house as well as to simplify and refashion the existing flow of spaces inside.  There were two large 100-foot plus tall American birch trees that pressed up against the back of the house, and although we knew we wanted to expand the house to the rear, we did not want to lose those two trees.  In order to save the birch trees, we designed a steel-framed addition with a helical pier foundation and a cantilevered steel and concrete structure that allowed us to minimally affect the trees’ root systems, and we opened up the house to what became a beautiful, private wooded rear escape.

We reorganized the whole ground floor moving the front entry to the center and making it all glass to create a better street presence and moving the garage access to add a Mud Room/Gardening Room that filtered from outside to inside on both sides of the house. We connected every public space – kitchen, dining, living – to the rear yard opening the views with larger windows and doors and improving the indoor-outdoor relationship. We added a large glass Sunroom and a new modern steel and glass staircase to the rear of the house along with a private roof deck above.  The materials used were simple, rich, and luxurious – walnut, quarter-sawn white oak, bluette marble, leather, blackened steel, stained concrete, glass – to add to the overall color and textural palette. A new darker color palette for the exterior brick and new siding and new black windows made the renovation/make-over complete.

The ‘Copper Line’ project began as a modest desire to enlarge the basement entertainment spaces of a traditional house in northern Virginia. We were asked to design a large, modern basement hideaway where the audiophile owner could retreat to listen to music. In reorganizing the basement spaces, moving the bedroom, and adding six feet to the back of the entire house, we created an opportunity to re-organize and enlarge some of the other challenging spaces on the main floor of the house above – enlarging the kitchen, dining room, and living room and improving the flow of spaces. What started as a smallish renovation ended up encompassing the entire ground floor, most of the basement, and even the stairs and railing between the three levels. The Owners wanted to maintain the traditional front to their house but opted for a more modern, minimal aesthetic inside and in the rear addition.  We started by re-designing the entry door with a pop of modern color and adding a subtle 3D glass tile in the foyer wall. We opened the spaces along the back of the house – adding large, open windows and sliding glass doors to the kitchen and the dining room and anchoring the open space with a large waterfall island. We eliminated all the extraneous details even hardware and allowed the simple, muted palette of wood, tile, quartz and glass to set the tone for the renovation. In contrast to the calm quiet of the interior materials, we chose a shiny copper standing seam to clad the entire two-story addition – siding and roof – and create a jewel-like addition hidden from the traditional suburban neighborhood.

The Sheridan Road Residence is a 5000 square foot flat-roof, brick modernist house built in the 1970’s on the north shore of Chicago. The project – an addition of a home-office space -was the impetus for a renovation of a majority of the interior details of the house. We inserted a new 400 square foot office floor within a double-height volume at the center of the house. A new steel and glass bridge ties together the existing house and the new home office and introduces a modern vocabulary to the details of the house. Working with a palette of blackened steel, glass, and American Black Walnut, we inserted a new double height wood wall, a new steel and glass bridge, new railings, and a new staircase. We also replaced an old bubble skylight with two 18 foot long skylight “cuts” above the wall and the bridge bringing light deep into the center of the house.

The focus of this renovation project was a subtle re-organization of the living spaces of the house.  The existing foyer which was originally the front porch was poorly closed in, inadequately insulated, and dark.  We re-built and reconfigured the entry, replacing the windows and adding a large coat closet and additional storage. We also changed a small ground floor bedroom into an airy home office and opened the kitchen into a beautiful open cook’s kitchen with custom painted cabinetry and a beautiful warm walnut island topped by a unique marble counter.

The Project is a large two-story addition to and renovation of a traditional Brooklyn Heights townhouse. The addition added a large playroom in the basement level as well as more than doubling the size of the kitchen above. The kitchen is a playful mixture of traditional and modern with a rear aluminum and glass façade that opens up completely to let in the beautifully manicured garden. The addition of a large skylight also ensures that the kitchen space is always bright and airy. In addition, we reconfigured the basement level to add a guest bedroom and a large playroom and excavated and underpinned the cellar to provide much needed height in the newly added playroom spaces.

This addition to the rear of a classic Cleveland Park home added a new large family room space off the kitchen, a warm, airy screen porch, and an inviting playroom and bedroom below in the walkout basement.  The Homeowners asked for a modern yet classic detailing of the space, so we added a nine-square coffered ceiling as well as a large “mantel” that accommodated the fireplace, wood storage as well as the flat-screen television to become the modern mantel for the home. A window seat and smartly detailed custom built-in cabinetry finished out the well-proportioned family room and opened up into the ipe flooring of the screen porch.  The dark, wooden finishes camouflage the porch in the wooded rear yard.

This Project is a gut renovation of a townhouse on Capitol Hill. By re-structuring and re-spacing the floor-to-floor heights, we were able to add an additional story to the building and still comply with the restrictive height limit in this DC residential neighborhood. In addition, we also dug out the basement and underpinned the building to get a usable basement level as well thereby adding 1600 square feet of living space to the footprint of the townhouse. The newly located and configured stair along with new skylights brought in much needed light into the center of the building on every floor. Every surface, every material was reconceived into a modern, open plan that created large social spaces and still maintained separate private zones. We were able to carve out a large master suite, walk-in closet, large master bathroom, small office niche, as well as a small outdoor space on the new top floor without changing the appearance from the street.

The Libertyville Residence was an addition/renovation project on a turn of the century Victorian farmhouse on a smaller in-town lot. The living spaces of the original house were a collection of smaller rooms that were closed off from each other, and in trying to open this up and add additional functional space to the kitchen, eating, family room area, we cantilevered spaces from each side of the house. The “addition” was designed as a copper box that appears to penetrate through the center of the entire house. One end of the copper box holds the new kitchen, and the other end is the family room space with a modern firebox. Both ends have plenty of glass to bring in air and light. Also, the addition of a couple of strategic dormers on the third level allowed us to open the attic space and create two additional bedrooms for the family.

PROJECT BY HAN ARCHIBALD DESIGN

This project focused on remodeling the living spaces of a house for a family of six that had a large extended family and would sometimes host family get-togethers of forty or more.  Beyond a large kitchen they needed entertainment spaces that could grow or shrink as needed.  Also, they were looking for more flexible outdoor spaces as well to entertain or to relax. We designed a larger open kitchen with two islands that flexed into a large dining/living area into which they could extend their dining table to its full fourteen feet six inches.  We also added on a large screen porch off the kitchen/dining area so they could flow out into the outdoors as well as re-building their deck so that it could accommodate more space outdoors as well.