This remodel and addition to a classic Tucker & Shield Mid Century Modern home in the Laurelhurst neighborhood of Seattle, strengthens the connection of rooms to one another, the public portions of the house to the site, and updates the finishes of this 1955 residence while staying true to the spirit of the original design.

A new day lit stair well creates a logical circulation path between the bedroom wing of the split-level, and the public spaces of the house, creating a more fluid transition to the second floor living.  The new family room addition builds off the home’s original elemental language of brick, wood and glass, providing a deck to take in the expansive views of Lake Washington - Leveraging the house's connection to a quintessential Seattle site.

A special thanks to the project manager Rich Denny of High Country Contractors for being a great partner on this project!

Saratoga Modern--exterior from backyard

Set in the Saratoga, California suburbs, this house is a complete reboot of a 1969 faux colonial.  We're stripping away the historical pastiche, and focusing the design on nearly seamless indoor/outdoor living.  Wrapping the house is a stone terrace and arcade which defines a new dining space, lounge area and a series of gardens.  It screens the intense solar exposure, and reinforces the horizontal in keeping with the City's very restrictive planning regulations.

The palette of natural materials is pretty rich, but understated, using changes in texture and shadow.  We'll be using a light colored, hard limestone, called Fiore from Maidenstone.  We'll use a split face texture for the arcade columns, hammered tile for the outdoor terrace, and a brushed finish for the interior tile.  The cabinetry and trim will be mostly walnut slab and panels.

More information and photos after the jump...

We've been investigating what the Urban Olympic project would look like as an 27 unit apartment building.  One potentially excited twist on the building is that we have split the bulk into two volumes with a 18' wide courtyard atrium.  The atrium and circulation are exterior, so we can apply another 2000 S.F.for an extra 3 units and still come in under the FAR limit.

We also did a first run at some energy modeling, using Archicad's EcoDesigner program, and feel that given the bulk it would be fairly straight forward to achieve the Passive House standard, but the return on investment is better if we design to the envelop to Washington State Energy Code, add solar hot water, switch the lighting to LEDs, and add an ERV.

Dave Boone has broke ground on our latest commercial project, The Canal Street Studio. This mixed use building on an infill lot in the Fremont neighborhood of Seattle, will house retail and office space, an artist's studio, and a caretakers residence. This live work studio for an interior designer/ceramicist and a writer, over looks the Fremont Canal, and is projected to be finished in spring of 2012.

Join us tonight at Future Shack 2011 for another evening of great dialogue about houses.  Last year I participated in the 'Speed-Date'---seven minutes to lay out the project and have a design brainstorm, then on to the next architect.  It was a blast, and this year Tim will be sitting in for me. After Speed Date Design, there will be a presentation of innovative ideas in housing.

Our entry, Urban Olympic, is a nine unit townhouse complex designed to use 90% less energy that typical code compliance housing.  See our entries over the last few years : 2011, 2009

It is at Fisher Pavillion in the Seattle Center, starting at 5 pm.

A short subdivison in West Seattle is serving as the site for two prefabricated homes for a Seattle developer.

CAST worked with a modular factory in Oregon to understand the constraints involved with building, shipping, and installing factory built structures. Leveraging this knowledge we have designed a prototype house which balances the economy of modular construction with selective site built elements to gain the modulation, character, and function which stock prefabricated construction typically lacks.

By making changes to the homes orientation, location of site built portions of the structure such as awnings, eaves, parking, and decks, an extremely economical structure is tailored into a series of custom homes.

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This new home was permitted under Seattle's citywide backyard cottage ordinance (which is rapidly approaching it's second year anniversary). The existing home, with a large corner lot and alley access, was an ideal candidate for a backyard cottage. The site allowed both the existing home and new cottage to enter from separate streets, have separate outdoor living areas and maintain a great deal of privacy from one another.

The owner desired a modestly scaled 800 square foot structure with exterior massing that followed the traditional lines of the existing home and a modern, light filled interior that opened to a private courtyard and was suitable for entertaining guests. The floor plan centers on a double height dining room with clerestory windows, sleeping loft and a large 4 panel door that frames views of the private courtyard and terraced garden. The cottage features radiant floor heating, an efficient on boiler with integrated solar hot water collection and a 1500 gallon cistern for rainwater catchment.

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View from the dining room into the kitchen.

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1,500 gallon cistern for rainwater catchment.

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View from the kitchen into the dining room and living room.

The Widner Cottage is going to be open to the public twice this summer for tours:

First, the Phinney Neighborhood Association's Home and Garden Tour will roll through on June 12th, from 11-4 pm (see link).

Second, the Cottage will be featured as the AIA Seattle's Open House on July 17th from noon to 3 pm.  More information here.  As part of the tour, the house will be published in Seattle Magazine, in the Northwest Home section in July.

One of our clients is documenting the process of transforming their bungalow with passive solar addition  (Design brief here) with a image laden blog. Check it out!

Urban Olympic is a community of 9 townhouses, and will  mark a couple of firsts for us:  our first Passive House project and also our first project under the new Seattle multifamily code.

Passive House is a rigorous green building standard focused on exclusively on energy consumption, energy efficiency and air quality. They are super insulated, almost airtight, and therefore need very little energy input to heat (up to a 90% reduction of the energy used by a typical code compliant house).  The heat from equipment, people and lighting retained within the insulated building envelope essentially replaces the furnace/boiler as the primary heat source. Fresh air is conditioned through a Heat Recovery Ventilator (HRV) with the exhausted air.  Although solar gain does factor into the equation, Passive Houses are not passive solar houses.

Urban Olympic, to my knowledge, will be the first multifamily Passive House in the United States.

Thank you to all our friends and colleagues that came out last night to help us celebrate our new office space!  Standing room only!  Now if only one of us had thought to snap a picture when the crowd was actually there....

Since we haven't decided what to do with the big wall that separates the desks from the conference/copy space, we took all the recycled moving boxes, cut them down on the table saw, then glued them up, thus recycling them again.   Perfect for the party!

Our new office at 115 North 36th Street is fully operational.  Now back to work....