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 Edgewood III Residence is a Work in Progress for a repeat client.  It is a renovation of the living and a bathroom spaces of a modest in-town home. We reconfigured the stair down into the lower level living/family room to create more space and provide some additional privacy to those spaces of the house.  We also paneled the walls and fireplace in a light quartersawn white oak to soften the textures and provide a more tailored space.  With custom shelving space and storage for the custom stereo sound system, we make the most of the spaces.  We also renovated a small master bathroom to create a more spa-like setting in white marble throughout and custom cabinetry and a steel and brass privacy screeen.  This project was really about the richness of materials to create a serene and peaceful setting for their lives.

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.

SEPTEMEBER 16 is a Coffee + Wine Bar in the fashionable Hannamdong district of Seoul, Korea. Carved from an old existing concrete building, we wrapped the outside with a metal screen to create a more uniform face to a very chaotic and mixed neighborhood.  Depending on the time of day and the lighting, the screen becomes either a translucent face or a more transparent, diaphonous slip of space.  Fashioning an unused space into a patio/garden, you enter through what seems like a small alley into a warm, inviting space.  The architecture is a mixture of wood and cement  and steel and glass and creates an environment that works both for the daytime (coffee) and at night (wine).  The owner is a French trained chef, and the space has a private dining room where he can hold intimate dinner parties for denizens of the Seoul nights.

The project was a comprehensive renovation of a large condo in high-rise building in the river-side neighborhood of Rosslyn.  The Clients were moving from a large “Williamsburg-style” suburban home and wanted to bring some of the architecture and furnishings of that into their modern glassy condo.  We re-worked the proportions of some of the rooms, introduced some period paneling into some of the spaces, and designed new arched double doors to separate the public and private spaces.

This project reimagined the small dark kitchen in this Washington DC Victorian into a modern, bright warm kosher kitchen.  The duality of the kosher cooking inspired the two-tone finishes of the custom cabinetry – a warm cherry finish played off the cool black paint of the other; and that duality is mirrored in the granite and wood countertops as well.  The new kitchen opens onto the dining and living area with the aid of new steel beams and column to create a modern flow.

This project was a collaboration with David Schaefer of Furniture Co to re-design the lobby of an existing building in the Meatpacking District of  New York City. In what was an old industrial warehouse-type building on the outskirts of a booming new neighborhood, we designed a simple, restrained walnut paneled wall to hide the accessible lift and guide visitors into the building.  We stripped down the idea of the building canopy to its structural essence and added beautiful custom lighting elements. Simple.