Sarah Whiting and Ron Witte think of their home as a hub for an ever-evolving community. Both architects and professors at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design, and Sarah the dean, the couple has an open-door policy for houseguests and students alike. It creates a thrilling atmosphere, they say, where new ideas are always circulating.

“As teachers and architects, we often bring people in for a meal, a night, a conversation, or a project,” Ron says. “We’d like to think of all these people as ‘living on our street,’ if only for a moment. It’s corny, but we think it matters.”

The couple reside on a central thoroughfare in Cambridge where established, multigenerational families intermingle with newcomers in a setting that’s in constant flux. The freshest faces seem to be interested in biotech, Ron and Sarah have observed, but tomorrow, who knows. “The neighborhood is in transition,” says Sarah. “Albeit, it’s at different speeds, with equal doses of continuity and change.”

Ron and Sarah’s new home, a two-bed, two-and-a-half bath, mirrors the neighborhood’s mix of old and new. It was once a soda-bottling facility in the mid-20th century, and later, an event-lighting business. The couple bought the building in 2020 with every intention of elevating the single most element that attracted them to it in the first place.

“Pure and simple: space,” says Sarah. “The proportions of rooms, the possibility of daylight, the way we could move around in it. This building allows us to live with plenty of openness and just enough separation.” Adds Ron, “Space doesn’t have to ‘look like a house’ to be a great place to live.”

The two-level building is made of precast concrete blocks and has an open interior topped with a timber ceiling. “It was very exciting that the heavy timber columns and beams transferred to a steel structure at the lower level,” Ron says. “We have no idea why the original building was built this way, but for an architect, it’s provocative.”

There wasn’t a lot of natural light, though, nor was there much privacy from the street. Some walls proved to be in more disrepair than they looked, and the single-paned windows sure weren’t keeping out the seasons. There was also a non-functional chimney, a long-forgotten garage, and the fact that this used to be a place where people worked. But the couple summed all that up as a challenge. They had new ideas.

“As contemporary architects, we had no interest in living in a sentimental re-creation,” says Sarah. “While there are a few parts of the final space that are unabashed about their origins, we wanted to create a place for now. This was an ‘invigoration’ project, not a ‘preservation’ project.”

Structural repairs were made to the walls, roof, and timber ceiling— “without good tradespeople, architects can’t do anything,” Sarah says—and the insulation and windows were updated in the process. The couple nixed the chimney and traded the garage doors for windows on the first level, which is now their office. When it came to accessing natural light, the couple’s created a series of openings including a skylight. “The second floor was continuous, so we cut a hole in it to bring daylight and air into the center of the building,” Ron says. “We then added a bridge across that hole to lead to the primary suite.”

“The building’s spatial qualities were remarkable before we walked in, they just needed a little nudging here and there to make them a home.”
—Sarah Whiting, architect and resident

“We used the same materials everywhere,” says Ron. “These materials recede at times, like the white walls, and let their qualities be heard at times, like the wood of the floors and ceilings.”" layout="wide" credit="Photo by Ron Witte" photoUserId=""/>

Concerning the interior design, Ron says that he and Sarah are “selective minimalists,” but they also wanted to keep the architecture at the forefront. “There are essentially only six materials in the building: end-grain wood flooring, sheetrock, heavy timber, quartzite, and ceramic tile,” Ron says. Artwork the couple has carried with them over the years provides decor, as does a wall of books on the second level that guests can peruse at gatherings.

“To see books is to see what people think and do. Maybe even to see what they are. If that’s not dripping with intimacy, what is?” Ron says. Sarah adds that nothing matches just right, and that’s what gives their home dimension. “Our things are supposed to bump into each other: modern, traditional, wood, glass, and so on,” she says. “It’s what makes sitting in a chair while looking at another chair more interesting.”

Like that mixture of elements, Ron and Sarah’s home facilitates run-ins with guests and each other, whether they’re designing spaces or having a meal. “We enjoy our work, and we enjoy our lives, without really separating those two parts of our days,” Sarah says. “There is a great deal of work/life balance discussion today, and honestly, we’re not trying to balance anything. We’re trying to enjoy all of it. We’ve long felt that the kind of people we want to work with are also the kind of people we want to have dinner with.”

Related Reading:

Budget Breakdown: A Work-From-Home Couple Reenvision a Loft for $291K. The Office Steals the Show

My House: A Filmmaker Couple Put a London Shoe Factory Back Into Production as Their Home and Studio

Project Details:

Architect of Record: Ron Witte

Builder: Jay Fishlin, Fishlin Construction Inc.

Structural Engineer: Jennifer McClain, RSE Associates

Cabinetry Design: Dean Cabinetry