Four Houses and a Future

The two hardest-working architects in America aren’t licensed architects—or American-born for that matter. Beat Schenk and Chaewon Kim first gained recognition in 2004 when, in the shadow of the Harvard Design School (Kim’s alma mater), they took a traditional New England worker’s cottage, weather-washed shingles and all, and transformed it into a two-story Cor-Ten steel–and–polycarbonate A-frame (see "New Beginnings," March 2005). The controversy that ensued only fueled their desire to keep building, and before the rust could set, the young married couple, who met as students at SCI-Arc, decided to expand—not because they wanted to, but because, in their minds, they had to.

"All we could do is build," says the soft-spoken Kim, 31, a breast-cancer survivor from Korea who has been waiting for a green card for the last five years. "Since legally we cannot take on a commission, we became our own clients, developer, contractor, architect, homeowner, and broker."

For Schenk, bringing their vision to life was especially significant. "This is my outlet for creativity, for putting out ideas and taking risks," says the Switzerland native,  who spends his days designing hospitals and dormitories for Boston-based Cannon Design. "More importantly, we wanted to show other young architects that, even though the U.S. market is driven by corporations, there is still hope to do something on your own." So with not a cent to spare, Kim and Schenk went back to the drawing board and began to design what has come to be known as Medium, or the Black Box, a 29-foot-high extension connected to the original Small property (a.k.a. Metal Storage) by a ten-foot-long translucent Polygal corridor. The glue on the model was barely dry when they realized that in order to have two properties on one lot, Cambridge zoning laws required an additional 200 square feet of land.

The logical next step for two broke designers (one employed, the other not) with a dream and a design? Buy the house next door (now dubbed Large, or Grandma’s Shed), which they could only afford by taking out a $560,000 mortgage on Small. "The first banker said, ‘No way you can buy this house with your income,’" says Schenk. "So we found another broker who was, you know...flexible," Kim continues.

With spending cash at a minimum, the duo made use of their most valuable resource: themselves. "We asked ourselves how we could build with the least amount of capital," Schenk recalls. They bought every DIY book Home Depot sold, spent hours on the Internet researching cheap materials (cork flooring, Polygal, plywood, leftover marble), and spent weekends and nights doing most of the work themselves. "About 50 percent of the cost is labor," Schenk says. "So if you can’t install it yourself, you won’t save much." Money wasn’t the only reason for taking such a hands-on approach. "In the beginning, we didn’t think we would be doing much of the interior finishing work, but I was worried about the quality," he says. "Unless you pay someone a really large amount of money, if you want it done right, you have to do it yourself." "And then he winds up in the emergency room," Kim teases, recalling an incident when Schenk, exhausted from working essentially two jobs, dropped a kitchen knife on his foot. The other two injuries, a swollen ankle and a smashed pinkie toe, were less serious. 

The battle scars were worth it. They finished Medium at minimal cost (for the exterior they used inexpensive red cedar tongue-and-groove and stained it black to hide the blemishes) and quickly sold it for $609,000 to Sean and Lynne O’Brien, two health-care professionals who read about the project in the Boston Globe. "We had just moved into the back of an old Victorian in Harvard Square that my wife loved," says Sean, who convinced Lynne to go to the open house just to take a look. "We went upstairs and saw the bathtub in the middle of the master bedroom. I climbed in, tested it out, and said, ‘Honey, I think we need to buy this house.’ There’s just something about sitting in the tub surrounded by nature in the middle of the city."