He added floor-to-ceiling windows by Andersen, which allow low winter sunlight to warm the interior in colder months.
Originally designed by locally renowned architect Arthur Dallas Stenger, this 1960s home featured an unusual awning that was maintained during a 21st-century upgrade by architects Rick and Cindy Black. The architects partially reconfigured the interior layout, updated the kitchen, and added new doors to the porch, all the while making sure the adjustments to the house honored its midcentury provenance while still avoiding creating a time capsule.
A family in Hamburg, Germany, turned a kitschy turn-of-the-century villa into a high-design home with a few exterior tricks, including sheathing the exterior in one-dimensional, murdered-out black.
The original home was preserved and renovated. In the front bedroom, a small window was replaced with a large painted-steel window seat, a favorite of the residents' grandchildren.
The ladder from the kitchen leads to this "sleeping box," a tucked-away room perfect for visiting relatives, or as Heierle discovered during a trip to work on the project, visiting architects. When light streams through the skylight and down into the hallway below, it adds an "almost mystic element," says Heierle.