The master bedroom overlooks the landscape through a glazed gable wall, which is shaded with a deep overhang.
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After: The kitchen faces the back garden and benefits from a double height atrium space. Pine has been used for the kitchen flooring and cabinets. Extensive glazing gives the ground floor living spaces a direct visual link with the courtyard and terrace.
The entry is marked by a thin, cantilevered canopy hovering over the front porch.
Structural engineering firm Robert Silman Associates was key in helping the couple execute their design, particularly the cantilevered standing-seam aluminum roof.
The roughly 5,000-square-foot Lens House renovation, which was finished in 2012 and just won a 2014 RIBA National Award, required six years, major remedial work on the roof and walls, approval from the planning committee, and even a sign-off from a horticulturalist to guarantee the backyard excavation didn't interfere with a walnut tree. "These things aren’t for people who are in a hurry," says architect Alison Brooks. The focus is the ten-sided trapezoidal office addition. "It wraps itself around the house with a completely different set of rules than the Victorian building," she says.
The simplicity in massing and material create a sculptural blocking of interior and exterior spaces.
Tall steel-and-glass doors open to the backyard and bring some understated drama.
During the daytime, the house is completely illuminated by natural light. Other energy-efficient features come in the form of the house's super thick building envelope, radiant floor heating, and cross-ventilation.
Inspired by the small scale of Japanese residences—in particular, Makoto Masuzawa’s 1952 Minimum House—architect Andrew Simpson designed his own economical 538-square-foot home set into a wooded site in Island Bay, a coastal suburb outside Wellington, New Zealand.
“Durability drove the selection of metal panels,” Schaer says of the home’s industrial exterior. Manufactured by AEP SPAN from corrugated cladding, it looks like zinc but costs significantly less. It also contrasts nicely with the natural siding and trim. “All of the wood inside and out is Douglas Fir, the predominant wood species in the northwest,” Schaer explains.
Blauvelt and Winter ground their soaring two-story living room with classics such as Eero Saarinen’s Womb chair and ottoman, a Noguchi coffee table, an Eames wire-base table and a Danish teak credenza, which displays their collection of pottery and a pair of Martz lamps made by Marshall Studios. Flor carpet tiles help add color to the neutral palette.
The landscape design, by Anna Boeschenstein of Grounded, followed a 2,200-square-foot extension by Formwork architects Robert and Cecilia H. Nichols. The front door is painted in Chinese Red by Sherwin-Williams.
For Gabriel Ramirez and his partner Sarah Mason Williams, following the Sea Ranch rules—local covenants guide new designs—didn’t mean slipping into Sea Ranch clichés. The architects love Cor-Ten steel, with its ruddy and almost organic surface, and they made it the main exterior material, along with board-formed concrete and ipe wood. The Cor-Ten, which quickly turned an autumnal rust in the sea air, and the concrete, with its grain and crannies, mean the house isn’t a pristine box, Ramirez says. His Neutra house “was very crisp and clean,” he says. “This house is more distressed, more wabi-sabi.”
An Alvar Aalto table is surrounded by a quartet of the designer’s Chair 65.
A maple tree grows through an ipe deck in this garden that Mary Barensfeld designed for a family in Berkeley, California. A reflecting pool separates it from a granite patio, which is furnished with a Petal dining table by Richard Schultz and chairs by Mario Bellini. The 1,150-square-foot garden serves as an elegant transition from the couple’s 1964 Japanese-style town house to a small, elevated terrace with views of San Francisco Bay. Filigreed Cor-Ten steel fence screens—perforated with a water-jet cutter to cast dappled shadows on a bench and the ground below—and zigzagging board-formed concrete retaining walls are examples.
Jessica Helgerson Interior Design, with project manager and lead designer Emily Kudsen Leland at the helm, remade a Portland abode with a crisp paint palette: Benjamin Moore’s Wrought Iron for the cladding and Venetian Gold for the front door. The home was originally designed by Saul Zaik in Southwest Portland, complete with a wood-clad exterior, in 1956. As part of the renovation, landscape design was completed by Lilyvilla Gardens.
When current homeowner Joseph Amory purchased 3322 Ocotea Street in 2014, the 1959 residence’s midcentury plan had been corrupted. Undaunted, Amory enlisted In Situ Studio to modernize the 3,400-square-foot dwelling while preserving its midcentury roots.
Burnt cedar, Japanese cypress plywood, and mortar create a trio of contrasting yet simple surface textures that breathe a relaxed vibe into the Muji Hut.
The view as it appears today.
The home’s geometric silhouette echoes the classic typology of the region’s gable roof barns. “We took our inspiration from this vernacular architecture and re-interpreted it with a contemporary twist,” Dworkind says.
Usha and Mike Kreaden had a virtually blank slate when it came to the garden outside the 1958 Joseph Eichler house that they bought in Silicon Valley two decades ago.