TAG contemporary house
Griffin Island House Design Update – a “floating hole”
One of the most critical design imperatives for a new custom house is that it should be fully integrated with its unique landscape. We are currently collaborating with Kris Horiuchi of Horiuchi Solien Landscape Architects on a new house for a spectacular four acre site on Griffin Island in Wellfleet, MA. The site photos and digital model we posted back on March 19th show a design that takes its formal cues not only directly from Cape Cod Bay but also from the actively shifting, sliding, sandy topography of its dramatic coastal bank. The coastal bank’s movement is almost visible to the naked eye, with sand and trees moving together in dramatic harmony, and our house will also appear to shift and slide with the landscape. One interesting surprise we have proposed to both the owners and Kris is a “floating hole” strategically placed in the middle of the house adjacent to the main entrance as well as main living space, where landscape and building architecture, earth and sky, sun and shade all come together, anchoring house to nature. See below for several building sections that we are developing, as well as additional details of the “hole”. And we’ll keep you posted as we continue to develop the design.
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- Rendered section facing Cape Cod Bay illustrating the relationship between the linear house and the Bay’s horizon, as well as how the new house will be both anchored to the site’s dynamic coastal bank and floating above the horizon.
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- Rendered section through the “floating hole”, facing north / uphill. Three sides of the hole will be glass, and the fourth will have a trellis to support an aromatic, flowering vine. The stone and river rock terrace below the hole will be a perfect shady spot for reading on hot days, with the surrounding native vegetation growing up and essentially into the house.
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- Rendered section through the “floating hole”, facing south towards the main living space with its curving metal roof. Here you can see the operable windows that line three sides of the “floating hole”, which will provide tantalizing views of ground and sky and also help naturally ventilate the entire house during even rainy days.
Modern Prefab house in Lincoln: Almost Done!
We are a few days away from move-in day at our Lincoln project, so we closed the studio for a few hours and everyone took a pre-Certificate-of-Occupancy look. Yes, there is a bit of a final punch list (as always), and Lincoln’s new Building Inspector brought up a few last minute concerns (also not unexpected), but on this gorgeous spring day, the sun shone gloriously, and we could all imagine the joy we hope our clients will feel once they are fully ensconced in their new home…
Will Ruhl
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- Street façade with living / dining volume on the right, guest bedroom on the far left, and roof deck in the middle.
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- Screened porch with NanaWall bi-folding doors connecting to the living / dining area, and listening room and home office volume above.
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- Street façade with stone steps leading up to 3-story entry / stair hall.
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- Roof deck between main living spaces and bedrooms, and adjacent to kitchen.
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- LR fireplace with honed Botticino surround and spark fire fireplace is detailed to float above the quartersawn red oak floors.
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- Stair screen wall holds up the custom steel stair, and has cutouts to allow light and selective views between the double height living space and stair.
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- Custom steel stair with 2×6 steel channel stringers, flat bar posts, stainless steel cable rails, and quartersawn red oak treads and handrails.
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- Custom steel stair close-up view at landing.
Sustainable design; IKEA granite
Designing sustainably has never been an appealing fad as far as we have been concerned, nor is it even really a separate mission for us; it has always simply been the right thing to do. One recently completed Ruhl Walker project – our Mystic Lake House – has received some press for Matthew Cunningham’s sustainable landscape design: Paula Bodah blogged about our use of reclaimed granite from Somerville’s IKEA construction site in New England Home Magazine Blog today, and Matthew’s own blog has some additional information, as well as great photos. After such a mild winter (…knock on wood…), spring will no doubt bring added drama to this extraordinary landscape, and we can’t wait to share that with you!
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- Granite slabs sit on an IKEA construction site in Somerville waiting to be carted off to a landfill.
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- But we had better plans, and now hundreds of granite slabs have been repurposed in Arlington.
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- In the front yard, granite slabs were laid flat for a new entry walkway, with moss carefully placed within the joints
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- In the back yard, granite curbs were inserted into the lawn to define a terrace and to create steps leading down to the lake.
Construction Update: Lincoln Custom Prefab House
The custom prefab house we designed in Lincoln is nearing completion, and the owners are getting excited about moving out of their temporary apartment and into their new, sun-filled dream house! The cedar tongue and groove siding looks fantastic; it has a temporary protective coating and will be stained in the spring after studying some color options. There is a lot of frantic activity inside also, with the quarter sawn red oak flooring being finished this week, tile and trim almost complete, the stainless steel cable railings being installed, and the Pedini kitchen getting final adjustments.
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- The new house as seen from the street. The main living spaces are within the cube on the right, and bedrooms are on the left.
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- Looking up from the garage to the new front door and three-story stair hall beyond. In the middle is a sun-filled roof deck.
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- View of the west end of the house, with master bedroom in the left volume and guest bedroom in the right volume, separated by a narrow corridor.
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- The north and east sides of the house include a large screened porch, with home office and listening room above.
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- The new open riser steel stair, awaiting its stainless steel cable guard rail and quarter sawn red oak treads.
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- Between the double height living room and stair is a floating planar wall with openings cut in to allow views and light to pass through.
Construction Update: Modern Suburban Transformation
Last week we posted images of recent progress on our transformation of a speculatively-built house in suburban Boston, and this week we have windows to show off, adding a dose of scale and reality. Perhaps not as dramatic as when an entire custom prefab house is set in two or three days, like our Lincoln house, but the rainy weather we’ve been having is less potentially destructive with site-built structures than it can be with custom prefab modular. It’s fun to see the new spaces coming together, especially the new living spaces that hover over the basement level excavation, and the new master suite.
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- The remnants of the original “Garrison Colonial” are still visible from the street, with the central portion subtracted in order to create a two-story stair hall and to articulate two upstairs bedrooms. A new living room extends off to the left, and the new master suite is visible beyond.
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- The new cubic forms housing the new living space and upstairs master suite hover above what will eventually become a landscaped basement level outside living space, which will have a built-in fire pit and seating.
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- View of the new living / dining space.
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- The new master suite’s expansive views.
Construction Progress: Modern Suburban Transformation
There has been some real progress recently on our transformation of a speculatively-built “Garrison Colonial” house in suburban Boston. Since we first posted the design back in June, 2011, you will notice that there have been some substantial changes, namely to keep more of the existing house’s shell including its gabled roof. This was initially proposed as a cost-savings measure, and even though it didn’t ultimately result in substantial cost savings, the owner preferred keeping more of the original house for sentimental reasons. The excavated basement is also no longer going to include a lap pool; instead the space will be used as a home theater and guest suite. Last week we had steel and concrete, this week we can see the actual form of the “new” house!
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- The remnants of the original “Garrison Colonial” are still visible from the street, with the central portion subtracted in order to create a two-story stair hall. A new living room extends off to the left, and the new master suite is visible above.
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- The new cubic forms housing the new living space and upstairs master suite hover above what will eventually become a landscaped basement level outside living space, complete with fire pit.
Construction Progress: Four projects
Drawing, designing, and dreaming are all gratifying aspects of being an architect, but we also really love when the projects we’ve designed begin actual construction. That is after all the primary goal of what we do all day in the studio! We work with some fantastic general contractors, and working closely with them until the day our clients move in is an exciting, collaborative process. Check out the projects below, and we’ll keep posting updates in the coming weeks.
The renovation of this Boston rowhouse includes opening up the middle for a dramatic, three-story living space, with natural light eventually pouring down from a large skylight above.
A couple we met when we designed new faculty housing at St. Mark’s School in Southborough, MA, asked us to design a small addition to their two-room house in the Berkshires. The new space will provide additional living space as well as a bedroom and bathroom; the existing house with only an open sleeping loft, lacked the kind of privacy needed with older children. The flat roof of the addition is accessed from an exterior stair tower, and will eventually have a railing around it for small rooftop gatherings for star-gazing and enjoying views extending deep into Vermont.
A view of a steel stair above the front entrance of a new house in Lincoln. The stair treads and partial risers will be solid red oak, and the stair landing will have red oak flooring and red oak veneered plywood below.
Major earthwork is evident at this substantial renovation project in Chelmsford. Here you see the beginnings of an excavation that will become a landscaped garden and terrace cut into the ground in order to bring daylight into new lower level living spaces. Natural light is so critical! Only small parts of the existing house will remain untouched when the project is finished later this year.
New designs at Ruhl Walker Architects’ studio
We are really excited about several new projects in the early stages of design, including new houses, two new lofts, and a master plan for a small school in northern New Hampshire. We will share some more information about each of these projects in the coming weeks, but in the meantime, check out the images and information below.
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- One of several potential conceptual designs for a new house built on an enormous, shifting coastal bank on the outer reaches of Cape Cod, this view shows the house on the water side. The main living space is elevated above the ground, under an asymmetrically curved roof, to enhance views and natural ventilation.
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- The inland side of the same Cape beach house is more introspective, with smaller windows in a collage of overlapping and sliding curved planes and volumes. The main house is to the right and an art studio is to the left, connected by a deck / bridge.
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- We are also in the very early stages of design for a new house designed for a wooded site on Martha’s Vineyard, for wonderful clients we have known for over 20 years.
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- An early proposal for the Vineyard house illustrates our effort to design a house that appears to almost melt into the land, not unlike the stone farmers’ walls that snake through the woods.
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- A conceptual site model for five small houses built into a hill on Cape Cod. In the upper right corner is the client’s existing glass and steel house; each new house is to have a green roof so that the view down from the main house is of a modern sculptural landscape, not just a collection of roofs.
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- The conceptual site plan shows how the houses hug close to one setback line to allow for each house to have surprisingly large side yards that can be designed to open to the dramatic views as well as capture ocean breezes.
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- This conceptual digital model shows material and formal ideas for the redesign of a penthouse at the W hotel condominiums in Boston. The unit will have a new steel and glass stair to a roof deck, and boasts 270 degree views stretching from the Harbor Islands to the Charles River and Cambridge beyond.
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- The proposed new kitchen for the W unit.
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- We’ve just started redesigning two lofts at the Channel Center in Boston, both units that we happen to have designed for previous owners several years ago. This photo shows an intermediate owner’s idea of appropriate loft décor — not exactly our cup of tea! — and a subsequent owner ripped out the polycarbonate and steel sliding doors and built full height plastered walls, crown mouldings, and a plastic raised panel door around the custom steel, fir, and acid etched glass shelving…
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- The existing heavy timber beams and columns in the Channel Center have steel column caps that are open in the middle to allow for steel tension rods to pass through them; a very cool industrial detail.
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- We have also been working on a master plan for The White Mountain School in Bethlehem, NH. The plan includes renovations and energy enhancement improvements to all existing buildings, converting underutilized older buildings into staff housing, bringing the original Frederic Law Olmstead landscaping back to its original glory, bringing the 1960’s vintage main administrative / classroom building into the 21st century, and adding a new theater / gathering space and arts classrooms, a 16-bed dorm addition with two faculty apartments, and a new 28-bed dorm with 3 staff apartments. Clearly this ambitious plan will take many years to realize.
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- Most of the administrative, classroom, and gathering spaces are within a rambling main building. Much of the building was rebuilt in the early 1960’s after a devastating fire destroyed most of the original structure, which had been a private estate prior to being donated to the school. The plans above show preliminary thoughts on how to add a new entrance that includes an elevator and other accessibility improvements, new art classrooms with a green roof, a new theater, converting underutilized ground floor space to a fully accessible infirmary, and converting the former upstairs infirmary into staff housing.
Feasibility Studies: Row House Renovations
Architects are sometimes perceived as design aesthetes, imbued with an overabundance of “creativity” but only a modicum of common sense about how to build things and solve real world problems. A savvy homeowner, however, understands that architects are actually uniquely trained as problem-solvers, with fluid analytical skills and the ability to visualize what others cannot. More and more we find ourselves applying these skills with residential projects by engaging with our clients in pre-purchase feasibility studies, to help determine if a particular plot of land, or an existing building to be renovated is actually suitable for the intended purpose.
Recently one of our clients was negotiating with a developer for the custom build-out of an already gutted 5 story row house. Because the developer was proposing traditional detailing where the owner preferred modern, we were hired to prepare a design to the owner’s liking that the developer could then price out and presumably build. As with all of our projects we learned a lot about the owner during this exercise, and helped him better understand his own likes and dislikes and the kinds of spaces that would be best for him. We worked out some really interesting ideas around a double-height space that solved a lot of problems with the row house format’s limited daylight and multiple, cramped levels. In the end, our client determined that pushing these ideas in this particular project would be too expensive and the results would be compromised.
Undeterred, and armed with our work, he was able to negotiate a great deal on another project where others hadn’t seen its possibilities. Now we’re designing a great apartment, with a dramatic three story skylit atrium as an unexpected surprise, bringing light and a feeling of spaciousness to the innermost reaches of the apartment.
Check back soon and we’ll be posting construction photos!
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- Our initial feasibility study was for the redesign of a five-story row house with a very tight footprint. To gain a larger sense of space, we proposed removing a portion of one floor, resulting in the types of connecting views shown below.
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- Our current project, for the same client and now in construction, builds on the lessons learned from the earlier double-high connecting space. Here, we can join three larger floors around a central, skylit core.
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- In the initial feasibility study, entry is at street level, with a stair going up to bedrooms, and a bridge to the left connecting to a small living room with an open kitchen below.
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- In the current project, the dining table anchors the high vertical space. Just visible at the top of this rendering is a glass bridge leading to the master bedroom.
Architectural Regionalism and Modern House Design
A December 30, 2011 article in the Wall Street Journal‘s Friday Journal focused on architectural regionalism and its reemergence in house design. After decades in which well known architects designed houses that could be seen as idiosyncratic homages to their previous artistic preoccupations and that paid little attention to local climatic realities, architects (and their clients!) are once again finding joy and artistic inspiration in the house’s local surroundings and reinterpreting local traditions in fresh, inventive ways. We can only hope that this catches on with mass production and speculative house builders, which represents the vast majority of our country’s new housing stock…
Here are a few examples from our own portfolio that express our preoccupation with important regional architectural issues.
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- A house on the Big Island of Hawai‘i, designed by Rhoady Lee Architecture in collaboration with Ruhl Walker, has deep roof overhangs to protect the house from too much solar heat gain, and takes advantage of local trade winds with its expansive lanais. All wood is locally sourced, as are the lava rock walls. Credit: Rhoady Lee Architecture
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- In New England, as in this Ruhl Walker house in Westport, MA, we also need to protect our houses from harsh summer sun with roof overhangs, but they need to be designed to also allow for abundant winter sunlight to enter the house to passively warm the house. Windows can be opened to allow for ample natural ventilation, but most windows are fixed in place to maximize energy efficiency (and views, which aren’t marred by window screens!).
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- In the Big Island House, enormous walls of glass (detailed by Ruhl Walker’s Sandra Baron and Lilly Smith) mechanically slide out of the way to open the house up to the cool ocean breezes, and to allow for uninterrupted access to the house’s lushly landscaped grounds. Credit: Rhoady Lee Architecture
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- In our Westport house, we have a more transitional connection between inside and outside, with the main living space opening up to a large screened living space, which in turn opens to a raised deck, then down wide steps (wide enough for sitting as well as carrying trays of drinks!) to the yard and ultimately the Westport River. Alas, we have mosquitoes, green flies, rain, and snow!