Collection by BRIAN CAREY
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Modern Atrium House
The owners, inspired by mid-century modern architecture, hired Klopf Architecture to design an Eichler-inspired 21st-Century, energy efficient new home that would replace a dilapidated 1940s home. The home follows the gentle slope of the hillside while the overarching post-and-beam roof above provides an unchanging datum line. The changing moods of nature animate the house because of views through large glass walls at nearly every vantage point. Every square foot of the house remains close to the ground creating and adding to the sense of connection with nature.
An outdoor shower in the lower courtyard includes most of the materials that define the project, including Cor-Ten steel posts, horizontal ipe slats and decking, a custom seat and towel shelf set into a natural boulder, and concrete pavers. The yard includes many elements built for play, like a water feature embedded in a concrete wall that is fed by runoff rainwater collected from the breezeway roof.
Rusted metal, used on three of the home’s five roofs, extends to the entrance facade, which, in a nod to northern New Mexico’s haciendas, opens to a courtyard. Rather than buy pre-rusted siding, Molly and her father oxidized the steel themselves.
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Taos, New Mexico
Dwell Magazine : July / August 2017
The façade received fresh paint, as well as new impact resistant windows. The two-story addition rises behind it. “Given that the two-story wing was larger than the existing structure, it was critical for the new building to appear as lightweight as possible,” says the firm. “The reading of concrete, which is an almost universal residential structural system in South Florida, would have been too heavy against the reading of the low-slung wood roof of the original house.”
















