After
our interview, where we learned that the client’s house “just doesn’t
make any sense,” we sought to create useful, task-based spaces while
adding order and logic to the house. The main and most dramatic gesture
involved the installation of a three-sided pier fireplace in the middle
of the house, alongside a freshly opened stairwell. The fireplace
creates the vantage points, spatial definition, and connections the
house so desperately needed. The kitchen table, which previously sat in
the middle of the house was replaced with a built-in banquette connected
to the existing island. To further define the boundaries of the kitchen,
we dropped the perimeter ceilings and extended the new soffit into the
middle ground of the house to capture the area above the table. Other
areas of the home, like the new hearth room and the family/sun room
offer more subtle changes that foster the connections made with the
larger gestures and allow the varied spaces to act cohesively and
purposefully.
2018 National Award
