Welcome to How They Pulled It Off, where we take a close look at one particularly challenging aspect of a home design and get the nitty-gritty details about how it became a reality.

Architect Wakako Tokunaga was already a seasoned renovator in 2020 when the pandemic hit. In 2016, she updated her 1950s one-story brick rambler home in Tacoma Park, Maryland, just outside of Washington, D.C. She enlarged it to accommodate her growing family of five and their daily needs by adding a second story. So when she needed to adapt her ways of working to, as she describes, “the rapid changes the world was hit with” in 2020, she decided to design and build an addition at the back of the property instead of committing to a costly and lengthy commercial lease.

Wakako, who founded her firm WAK TOK architects in 2007, thoughtfully determined the size of the studio by the extents of their neighbor’s house and the desire to avoid blocking out sun on their property or changing their view. She also considered the proportion of her studio space to the garden, filled with native plants that she and her family had personally planted. She was looking for the right balance that would accommodate her team working together while still leaving plenty of green space and seclusion in the yard.

One key element of the studio space was its ability to open up to the outdoors, which made it feel expansive and larger than its 350 square feet. Wakako sought “to create a space that opens completely as an open-air pavilion which seamlessly connects to the patio and the garden.”

Two of the four sides of the studio space open up to the garden with sliding doors on tracks. The ability to open the doors makes for what Wakako describes as “an extended outdoor room,” an oasis that enables indoor/outdoor living—all while still being close to her kids as they were at school on Zoom. The other two walls to the studio are solid and fixed: the back wall is the original exterior of the home, and the other wall runs parallel to the neighbor’s property and adjacent fence. The original exterior brick wall was left exposed and painted a dark gray color in a milk paint finish, making “the new room feel more like an extension of the outside,” Wakako says.

The other solid wall functions as a storage and work space, clad entirely on the interior with plywood. Like the rest of the addition, the wall utilizes a four-foot-wide module to accommodate stock plywood panels. The module is repeated across the wall, breaking only where it meets the original exterior wall, where it gives way to a sink under a window.

To accommodate the many books, material samples, and art that Wakako wanted to display, she turned the plywood wall into a wall of shelving with an integrated desk. A track system with moveable brackets was installed at the four-foot module on the plywood panels, and its flexibility allows her to move and rearrange the shelves as needed. At the lowest, hip-height level, a deeper shelf creates a long workspace that can accommodate others on her team or, during the pandemic, her kids in school in close proximity.

How they pulled it off: Custom modular shelving

A four-foot grid was utilized throughout the structure to work with stock plywood panels and multi-slide door dimensions. This maximized efficiency and minimized material waste.
Natural and non-toxic materials were used both for the health of the space as well as the reduction of harmful waste down the road. Sustainably sourced pine siding, plywood, and concrete are used on walls, ceiling, and floor, along with all natural pine tar, hemp oil, and milk paint finishes.
Locally sourced fast-growing black locust, which is naturally rot and insect resistant, was used on the deck. The outer shell is insulated well above the code requirements in order to increase thermal comfort and to reduce energy consumption.
The shelves followed the same four-foot grid that the rest of the space’s construction deployed.
The aluminum channel tracks for the wall of shelving are recessed inside the plywood wall finish and hold the bracket modules that can move up and down the tracks as needed. The plywood shelves are placed on top of these brackets, and can be easily removed, added, or adjusted.
The minimalistic design called for essentially everything to be concealed, including light switches, outlets, mechanical grills, smoke detectors, curtain tracks, and insect screens, etc. which required a higher level of precision, planning ahead, and attention to details. What seems simple is more difficult to build—so Wakako chose her construction team carefully.

Today, the studio continues its multifunctional, dynamic use. Although her kids are back in school, the space is still used daily as an architecture studio, where team and client meetings are held, along with occasional community and social gatherings—and, she notes, maybe even a future community art space!

Project Credits:

Architect: Wakako Tokunaga, WAK TOK Architects / @wak.tok

Builder/General Contractor: True Contracting

LLC Strutural Engineer: Robert Wixon, APAC Engineering

Related Links:

How They Pulled It Off: a Hot Tub Built Into a Boulder