The Spring St Residence is a complete gut renovation of an 1820’s row house in the Nolita neighborhood of New York City into a 4000 square foot single-family residence with a ground floor retail/commercial space. The original first floor of the house was a parlor level floor a half level up from the street, so we restructured the entire building and added two stories to the building as well as an urban roof garden. The street level became a retail space with a custom blackened steel storefront as well as the private entrance to the house. We also excavated down to add a full basement below with a new two-story high private den. Because of the typical urban challenge of light, air, and privacy, we lifted the main living levels up an additional story so the living room, dining area, and kitchen are on the third floor with a private master suite on the fourth level above the noise and dust of the street. The details are all modern and many of them are custom designed and fabricated for this project including the steel windows and steel and wood staircases. The addition of three large skylights also add an enormous amount of light into several interior areas that would normally have been dark.

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 Waterlane Residence is a 6500 square foot private residence on the shores of Mahone Bay in Nova Scotia. It’s in-town location – near the town ferry and adjacent to a major pedestrian thoroughfare – provided a series of challenges for the design and the construction of the house. Moreover, the complexities of building so close to the water in a climate that faces the occasional hurricane also strongly shaped its expression. The design and materiality of the house was thus born from a series of oppositions – town v. water, public v. private, industrial v. residential, close v. distant, traditional v. modern, and open v. closed (vis a vis weather, views, and water access) – that all pressured the eventual form of the house.

The very public nature of the compact site engendered a more traditional and private “back” of the house as it faces the town and the neighbors but opens up to a much more open, glassy and modern expression on the water side. The materials and forms of the house are typical and traditional for the area – cedar shingle siding and cedar shake roofs – but the detailing is crisply modern and takes advantage of advances in construction materials and technology. The Great Room pavilion is the embodiment of the project – closed and guarded with high windows on the town/ferry side and clothed in stone and shingle, it is all glass, windows, doors, deck and views to the water.

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 Round Hill Residence is a Work in Progress scheduled to be completed in the spring of 2024.  It is a new construction residential project within the Stoneleigh Country Club in Round Hill, Virginia.  Sitting on a property that sits with both views of the course and distant views of the Blue Ridge mountains, the house responds to both the local and the general site and context. The style of the house also bridges between a more agrarian past and a more modern present with barn-like geometries that give way to large expanses of glass and wood and stone that frame views and spaces for the owners. The spaces are designed similarly with large wide open spaces for living and smaller, private spaces for work or contemplation.  One of the most interesting spaces is the sunken courtyard that opens out from the Home Gym in the basement – it will be lushly landscaped with interesting building textures (board formed concrete, shou sugi ban siding, local bluestone) and open to the sun and sky above.

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.