NW PDX Courtyard House

The design goals of this home were juxtapositions: A distinctly modern home in a old Portland neighborhood, a private refuge connected to the mixed-use setting, aging-in-place on a sloped, irregular shaped lot.
We started with the concept of an inwardly-focused, single level courtyard home to meet the needs of aging in place, while creating private refuge for indoor and outdoor living. Floor to ceiling windows on each side of the courtyard frame views of a Stewartia tree, which animates the house with filtered light, texture and color. We elevated the main living level a story above the street and made it accessible by elevator to navigate the sloping lot and make room for a garage and accessory dwelling unit. The ADU not only met the zoning requirements for a second dwelling on the lot, but could also be used for in-home care.
Built on what was once the parking lot, and long ago the pasture of the beloved historic mansion that was famously saved from demolition, care was taken to design a home that was at once distinctly modern but not out of place. To allow the neighboring historic mansion to anchor the street corner with its podium yard and vertical character, we employed a long low-slung roof to work as a counterpoint both in simplicity of detail and in form to the mansion. Neighboring craftsman homes often have narrow meandering stairs that wind up a steep garden to a porch perched above a garage, and we followed this pattern with a terraced walk-up stair that widens at it’s base to greet the street and creates a garden-porch at the top. We borrowed the horizontal barge board trim detail from surrounding homes to establish a horizontal datum at the floor level that is then again emphasized throughout the house in the handrail, roof eave trim, fireplace hearth and drawer pulls.
The South facing courtyard design leverages passive solar, daylighting & natural ventilation principles to create a home in tune with the seasons yet comfortable for modern living. Deep eaves provide summertime shade at the courtyard. Meanwhile limited window area on the West, and North sides reduce heat gain and loss to the home. We built a legacy home built for durability with the best practices in construction that include a tight building envelope with self-adhered weather resistive barrier, blown in cellulose insulation and vented cedar clad rainscreen, while the roof was built with R-70 roof insulation (10” of Blown in Insulation + Air sealed with two inches of closed cell spray foam insulation below deck with +/- 8” of tapered insulation above the roof deck).
The storm-water planter, which detains 100% of the roof water runoff, negotiates the sloping lot by serving as retaining wall allowing for sidewalk access to the ADU at street level. On hot summer days the residents can relax on the North facing deck perched above the planter with views of NW Portland.