Parts of Houses

This project was the result of a collaboration with Washington DC artist, sculptor Frederick L. Wall.

It involved renovating this freestanding fireplace using ordinary materials in extraordinary ways in order to highlight the hearth and its role as both joiner and separator between the living and dining rooms.

The fireplace and the tall niche are framed with cherry columns that taper downward. The mantel is a walnut and steel “sandwich” while the niche on the opposing side is filled with glass shelves over a blackened steel panel.

Behind the glass niche shelves is a panel of plywood covered with diamond- shaped “tiles” of copper foil, the same composition of materials which forms the mantel panel over the fireplace. The foil is chemically treated to produce varying hues seen in the photographs.

This small northwest DC apartment had two particular problems which needed solving simultaneously: the need for a library to accommodate a book collection numbering in the thousands, and the need to make “walls” appear and disappear on demand.

The solution was to create a library in which the architecture becomes furniture, and the furniture becomes architecture.

A wall was removed between the dining room and study, allowing the rolling library shelves to become the primary space makers for the two rooms. The shelves can be arranged to create multiple bookshelf configurations and to allow for different levels of privacy or openness.

Even a closet was turned into a connecting library alcove behind a moving shelf unit.

The rolling units are mounted on wheels, and are guided by an overhead track, allowing them to act with ease as both sliding walls and doors.

This c, 1900 townhouse in Washington, DC has a wonderful connection to the public street, but unlike many period rowhouses of its ilk, it does not have the typical rowhouse garden giving onto a rear alley.

Rather, this house abuts the rear alley with a non-conforming-to-code, two-story masonry structure containing a structurally deteriorated storage area with an unsound roof deck above.

With many zoning and code constraints guiding possible options, the goals were to: re-build the masonry structure in-kind; create a tiny urban garden that extends the interior living room to the out-of-doors; introduce passive solar strategies to admit and control daylight; and create a private urban alley-side roof garden.

The solution was to screen the roof terrace with a steel and mahogany trellis, a manufactured planting “wall”, and integral bench/planter. A retractable canvas sunshade protects the terrace from the western sun, thereby satisfying the need for a garden, shade and privacy.

Spa-in-a-Box

The pebbled shower pays homage to water as the essential element in the room and the suspended shower curtain serves double duty by keeping the floor dry and providing a privacy screen for the toilet area. The old radiator doubles as a towel warmer, and six dimmable light bulbs in porcelain utility fixtures provide lighting for any mood.

This bathroom was carved out of a mudroom in a Chicago-style bungalow in Atlanta, Georgia. The goal was to create a bathroom space that blended the indoors with the outdoors. Even in this tiny bathroom, natural light and materials evoke the out-of-doors and extend the sense of connection to nature, while also making the room feel more spacious. Primarily slate, maple, and glass, the natural materials create a sense of being in an outdoor shower.

The vanity top is a glass lavatory counter top, allowing the space to extend from wall-to-wall. Flanking seven-foot-tall cabinets of maple and glass support the tempered glass counter top, and a stainless steel sink bowl is set within the glass.

For maximum daylight, the skylight well tapers from the flat ceiling up to the glass in the gabled roof. Ceiling joists extending through the well are wrapped in maple, creating the sense of a pergola emerging from the ceiling and filtering the sunlight into the bathroom below.