Text description provided by the architects. A broad, introverted, opaque volume of private spaces floats above a fully transparent, extroverted space at grade that extends, below the canopy of the volume above, into the garden. This urban residence is a warm, intimate home for a family of four that can transform into a place of assembly as needed and has an integral connection between interior and exterior experiences.
Light and air courts, terminating in a series of reflecting pools, perforate the volume and extend vertically through the house to distribute reflected light, and activate the interior with rain and snow; further reinforcing the blurred boundaries of interior and exterior space.
A collaborative design process led to architectural and structural innovations that include vertically post-tensioned concrete thermal mass with forty foot cantilevers; pultruded fiberglass wide-flanges, filled with closed cell spray foam insulation, sheathed in aerated autoclaved concrete and pigmented cement stucco; thermally broken floor to ceiling glass curtain wall and sliding door system.
