Collection by Erika Heet
Great Modern Garages
As the following spaces show, a garage can be much more than a place to hide your stuff. Celebrate the unsung space with 8 we love from our pages.
Rather than a traditional frame construction, the Kansas City, Missouri, home of architect Jamie Darnell and Michele was built using SIPs (structural insulated panels) that came in four-by-eight-foot sections in kit form. With ladderlike steps leading to the front door, the place feels like an ultrapolished tree house. The arboreal atmosphere was intentional. "We’re tree people," Jamie says. Jamie built the decking, of ipe, to accommodate a tree by the entrance to the garage.
The architects created a mudroom off the garage with plenty of room for quick turnarounds and busy family comings and goings. Much of the garage had been taken up by a large ramp before the concrete floor was repoured on a slope that meets with the house, eliminating the need for a more cumbersome ramp and allowing room for storage shelves. “Your home is a place where you shouldn’t have to put out too much effort, whether you’re a person with a disability or not,” says Braitmayer. “You should be able to reserve all that energy and effort for the outside world.”
To deal with a Malibu site’s sharp incline, architect Bruce Bolander set the steel, concrete, and glass house on caissons. A deep wraparound porch nearly doubles the home’s living space and offers the ideal perch for outdoor dining and taking in spectacular views of the surrounding canyon. The garage serves as resident Dave Keffer’s home office. Photo by J Bennett Fitts.