Rather than go with the expected hardwood treatment, Scenario installed springier vinyl flooring on the home's top level. Its open circulation incorporates areas for study, eating, and lounging—a key fulfillment of the client’s directive for an engaging environment that maximizes contact and interaction.
The front elevation is a modern distillation of the historic homes in the neighborhood, featuring the same composition of a protruded front volume with a single opening flanked by a shaded living area
The structure's white stucco second story nods to the architecture of traditional tree houses and is used as sleeping quarters for the owner’s children. The leaves of the central oak tree can be seen peaking out above the façade.
“People scold us if we don’t raise the kite,” says Holm (sitting with Kiehl,). From the bench outside, the couple can wave to friends passing in boats and make use of the long summer evenings.
At age 34, Phillip M. Isaacson commissioned architect F.Frederick Bruck to design a home for him and his wife. That was 1959. Five decades later, he still lives in his ideal home--and very little has changed.
The architecture firm L. McComber Itée demolished a sloping ceiling in this Montreal attic to create a bright, roomy live-work space.
Ray sits at the central hearth on the north end of the comfortable sunken living area. From this perspective, you can see how the interior spaces flow into one another, passing one half-level up into the breakfast nook and kitchen and out from there onto the overgrown hillside. The various built-in furnishings have all been there since the house's construction.
"We did our best to tuck the buildings into the site—the goal was to get up high on a perch. It was a matter of setting that elevation and working back down with the topography," says architectural designer Riley Pratt.
Two hours north of New York City, an unusual barn emerges from a hill just off a country road. Its black siding and bright-red window frames hint at the imaginative playground inside. This space, with its rope-railed catwalk and indoor tent, is just one element of the multifaceted getaway architecture and design firm BarlisWedlick Architects designed for fund manager Ian Hague.
Two Black Sheds incorporates all the conventional aspects of a weekend retreat in a rather unconventional way.
Skylights and huge windows flood the master bedroom—and every room in the house—with sunlight. Bed by Techline; lighting by Tech Lighting.
Harlem Town House Renovation
After enduring what she calls “the Bermuda Triangle of New York,” otherwise known as the city’s planning department, Alysia Reiner and her partner, David Alan Basche, embarked on a massive renovation of their multiunit building in Harlem. Built in 1909, the structure, which was dark and had already been stripped to its original brick walls before the couple inherited it, became a blank slate for a thorough environmentally sensitive restoration. With help from architect Nicholas Moons of local design-build practice MontesBuild, Reiner and Basche updated their own triplex unit over the course of two years on a tight budget, integrating such elements as natural light, slate and bamboo flooring, and understated modern furnishings.
