Favorites

Solk Architecture turned this tiny Brooklyn kitchen into a home cook’s dream, complete with an herb garden, a custom island, and cabinetry galore.

With the Pacific Northwest’s abundant greenery but often dreary weather, Elizabeth wanted an indoor-outdoor space that maximized natural light on long-awaited sunny days.

The house sits in an established neighborhood filled with 1940s Cape Cods and bungalows from the 1920s and ’30s. As with many of our projects, we wanted to respect the scale of the neighborhood, even if it was a contemporary house, & make sure the house read pleasantly from the street in the context of the houses around it. Kinetic screens are utilized here to enclose the carport & allow the homeowner to attach outdoor art.

A board-formed concrete wall closes the ends of the home. The ceiling is made of eucalyptus planks.

The custom-build record storage and integrated cabinetry is the star of the show, with a horizontal band of glazing above to complete the space.

The bright, reflective surface amplifies natural light and bathes the interior in a warm glow even when the New England sun isn’t cooperating.

Working with project architect Kyle Bradley, Gray and Organschi started with the simplest of designs—a shed-type structure with a steeply canted single-pitch roof—and, as Organschi puts it, “started blowing it open and filling it with large areas of glass.”

The floors, walls, and ceilings are coated in FSC-Certified laminated bleached bamboo.

Suzanne and Brooks Kelley at the back of their 1,100-square-foot guest cottage.

A lofted sleeping space furnished with a king size Design Within Reach American Modern bed was made possible when the architects raised the ceiling to create a triangular skylight. The move carved out enough headroom to make the second-floor space usable, while still keeping the cottage in compliance with strict local zoning rules for “accessory” buildings.

There’s more concealed storage in the bathroom, this time clad in wooden tile so it blends in with the wall treatment. The flooring is terrazzo tile.

Now, soft white bagged brick and linear clarity unite the rear facade in a visually pleasing manner.

“It was really a breezy project,

View into the open-plan kitchen and living room in the bungalow's newly built back end. "T

A harmonious material palette is offset by playful peekaboo windows on the north-facing wall that frame the natural surroundings rather than the neighbors' windows.