1960s Ranch Offers Big City Feel in Historic Charleston

This one-of-a-kind, architect-redesigned, classic ranch style house with low sloping roofs is located two miles away from King Street — at over 300 years old, the second most historically and architecturally significant street in downtown Charleston— and minutes away from Folly Beach.

"We fell in love with Charleston while on vacation, but despite my love for architectural history, I prefer my home to be on the contemporary-side", says the homeowner, "I love that I can be partying in downtown Charleston one minute and in a cozy modern house surrounded by nature the next."

Built in 1969, this house is from an era where builder houses were not rubber-stamped as they are now and it is evident —with its emphasis on long, horizontal lines and single-story houses that were site-specific — that the designer’s hand was very much influenced by the midcentury philosophy in its exterior simplistic design features. However, when Italian-born and U.S. trained architect Matteo Rapallini studied the house, he felt that the interior of this ranch was lacking special qualities analogous to its true nature inspired by midcentury doctrine. The inefficient series of confined spaces which organized the house, in Matteo’s words “similar to a beehive”, and lacked the deep understanding of interior/exterior living and site features that live in harmony with nature. Keeping that in mind, the architect decided to thoroughly remodel the interior to marry such philosophy. This required starting from scratch. For this project, the architect deemed it necessary to have a sort of Tabula Rasa. Approximately 65% of the existing programmatic elements were reconfigured by eliminating unnecessary walls that separated the main living spaces. Built-ins, a classic feature oftentimes present in historic midcentury houses, were also added throughout the house to provide large amounts of storage without sacrificing otherwise awkward and unnecessary spaces that in the architect’s mind did nothing more than encumber the layout (i.e. broom, coat closets, and hallways).

An already-existing confined galley kitchen adjacent to a rather squalid laundry area was replaced by a chef’s kitchen which now stands as the focal point for entertaining in the main area of the house providing a big-city-feel rarely found in this price range. The house’s details are worthy of high end custom residential houses only found in the nearby islands of Kiawah, and Isle of Palms.

To create order out of chaos, the architect simplified the plan following the principle of serving-and-served-spaces, as he did not feel the necessity to over-complicate things. As such, the private portion of this house is clearly distinguished by a darker hallway to draw away attention and distract the interest of eventual guests away from what he defines as the “private spaces” (i.e. bedrooms and bathrooms) all true to the aforementioned principle and arranged in a conveniently compact layout defined by close proximity to one another to maximize efficiency.