Marketing executive Liz Margles and her husband were looking for a forever home. After completing several remodels over the years, they wanted to shape a house to their specific tastes—quiet on the outside, and “radically modern” within.

They purchased a 1930s house planning to respect elements of the original architecture—notably the arched doorway at the entry and formal, segmented spaces—while exploring their love for Spanish contemporary architecture and Memphis design.

Their architects, Aránzazu González Bernardo and Michael Fohring of Odami, proved the perfect match. González Bernardo was raised and educated in Spain, and all four share a love for Jaime Hayon. Designers and clients soon agreed on a few key ingredients: arched doorways; figured natural stone; and lots of Caesarstone, used “in a very architectural way” to define doorframes, transitions, and kitchen built-ins.

Odami led a year-long remodel that rebuilt the back of the house and reshuffled its kitchen and dining room, and enclosed the main entrance, at the side, to create a more generous foyer. Upstairs, they converted a second-floor principal bedroom into an office, and made a third-floor addition to accommodate a new principal suite and walk-in closet. These spatial interventions were fairly modest; rather than gut the house, the designers chose to keep its rooms mostly intact.

But the rooms got dressed up with new materials and textures. A textured lime paint covers the main-floor ceilings, modulating the light that pours into the house through its north-facing back windows. The architects clad the doorways with panels of Caesarstone—a product Liz knows well, having served as that company’s head of marketing. The same lightly patterned Caesarstone also clads the new kitchen island; two vertical panels hide any countertop mess, and their edges curve smoothly downward, nodding quietly to some rounded doorways that are original to the house.

“It’s important to us to pull as much inspiration from the existing space as possible,” Fohring says. “There were details here that really inspired us.” Leaded-glass windows were kept and restored. So was a built-in clock in the kitchen, which resembles an art object in the new, crisply detailed interior.

While history was a guide, the house was also shaped by a very different source of ideas: the couple’s collection of postmodern furniture and objects. Liz and her husband own midcentury Italian ceramics and Memphis furniture. Odami designed a new fireplace surround that picks up on these currents of bold colors and strong geometries. The chimney is now curved, and it’s fronted by panels of Calacatta Vagli, “a very bossy marble,” Liz says, carved with a fluted profile.

Meanwhile, on the exterior, the house got a coat of black paint, and Odami sculpted the top-floor addition to fit the formal language of the surrounding houses. The end result “feels existing—like it really belongs,” says Fohring. “We’re not trying to erase history and put in something entirely new.” At the same time, Liz says, the house feels very much like her family’s. “If you took the furniture away, you could see our personality in the ceilings, in the fireplace, in the way we very intentionally designed the kitchen. We did everything exactly the way we wanted to do it, and it feels good.”

More projects by Odami:

An All-Too-’80s Condo Trades Its Popcorn Ceiling for a Chic Sunroom

A Bright and Airy Home Brings Beach Vibes to Urban Toronto

Project Credits:

Architect of Record: Aránzazu González Bernardo, Odami / @odami.team

Builder: Dxpert

Structural Engineer: Hossein Azargive

Interior Design: Odami

Cabinetry Design/Installation: Unique Store Fixtures

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