Working with a familiar client, the architects were asked to design a 1,228-square-foot suite addition with a basement level of 1,072 square feet to a house they had renovated in the past. This time, the clients wanted a private world to themselves—separate yet connected to the main house. Design concept and solution: Within the simple white brick gable of the three-story addition, a wooden tower contains the bedroom, generous open bath, and dressing area on the main level, with a meditation space upstairs. A basement level has a gym, massage room, and storage. The tower, inside and out, and the
Alex de Rijke, founding director of dRMM Architects in London, and his client for the Sliding House hadn’t seen each other since their days as schoolmates and teenage motorcycle enthusiasts.
A storefront from the early 1900s, which had served as a drugstore and soda fountain, is converted into a live/work space for a couple in the real-estate business.
If you ask Georg Kratzenstein, project architect for Frankfurt, Germany based Meixner Schlueter Wendt Architects, to describe the house his firm designed for a family of five in the town of Kronberg im Taunus, he will tell you it’s a “completely normal, pitched-roof house, built on a slope, where the mass of the garden floor has been subtracted.”
When the owners, a couple with five children between them with one still living at home, purchased the overgrown, approximately 1.5-acre property, located in the tree-lined Seattle neighborhood of Washington Park with views of Mount Rainer, Lake Washington, and the Bellevue skyline, it contained a charming but modest traditional house and guest cottage in need of repair. The architects spent time pursuing the possibility of a remodel and addition, but the state of the house and site made this option unfeasible. The ensuing design stemmed from a combination of reverence for the original house and site and Domestic Architecture’s theoretical
With a very modest budget and a narrow, elongated site in a tiny village in Spain, the clients asked for a small house that could be used as a painting studio as well as an occasional weekend home for their children.
The town of Rotenberg is located in a World Heritage listed area in the Southern German district of Stuttgart. The clients wanted a modern home that would accommodate their multigenerational family. Overcoming the challenges of the historic area’s strict building codes and an awkwardly shaped, tight building site has resulted in a three-story, less than 1,000-square foot home with frugal details and a modern sensibility that pays respect to the traditional forms and building craftsmanship of the region. Design concept and solution:In context with the area’s traditional houses, the barnlike volume is painted white. Windows are positioned to frame views