Madrona House
Seattle, WA
completed 2021
3300 sf
in collaboration with Carsten Stinn Architecture
contractor: PH Robison
photographer: Kevin Scott
The Madrona House nestles into a historic Seattle hilltop neighborhood, looking east to Lake Washington and the Cascade Mountain Range beyond. Built for a downsizing couple that owned the historic craftsman house next door, the house was designed to maximize light and connection to the outdoors, with a strong sense of mass and materiality.
The home was designed as a plinth with thick walls and hearth rising out of it, capped by a carved wooden volume. The irregular textures of the concrete change with the time of day and the color of the sky through the seasons, giving a sense of heft and permanence to the home. Glazed openings are inset to the interior surface to express the thickness of walls, creating covered outdoor spaces where possible. Details like concealed headers, minimal exposed flashing, and a continuous reveal joint between the concrete and flush wood upper story accentuate the mass and elemental composition of the home. Light is diffused through the more open east and west ends of the home, as well as the courtyard, and carefully placed skylights to create a luminuous sanctuary from the surrounding city.
Madrona House in the New York Times, Portrait
Seattle, WA
completed 2021
3300 sf
in collaboration with Carsten Stinn Architecture
contractor: PH Robison
photographer: Kevin Scott
The Madrona House nestles into a historic Seattle hilltop neighborhood, looking east to Lake Washington and the Cascade Mountain Range beyond. Built for a downsizing couple that owned the historic craftsman house next door, the house was designed to maximize light and connection to the outdoors, with a strong sense of mass and materiality.
The home was designed as a plinth with thick walls and hearth rising out of it, capped by a carved wooden volume. The irregular textures of the concrete change with the time of day and the color of the sky through the seasons, giving a sense of heft and permanence to the home. Glazed openings are inset to the interior surface to express the thickness of walls, creating covered outdoor spaces where possible. Details like concealed headers, minimal exposed flashing, and a continuous reveal joint between the concrete and flush wood upper story accentuate the mass and elemental composition of the home. Light is diffused through the more open east and west ends of the home, as well as the courtyard, and carefully placed skylights to create a luminuous sanctuary from the surrounding city.
Madrona House in the New York Times, Portrait
Jade Alley
Miami Design District, Miami, FL
2018
in collaboration with SB Architects
National AIA Small Project Award 2023
A series of parabolic concrete walls and facades give new life to a nondescript Miami alley with changes in scale, shadow, and light integrating new and existing buildings together with a hidden court full of flowering trees at its center. The alley hopes to maintain its obscurity and crudeness in an otherwise sleek and glossy new shopping neighborhood.
Tree House
Seattle, WA
2018—present
status: construction
A timber frame house for a carpenter- this house utilizes a structural frame to make a series of intimate rooms in the trees on an east Seattle hillside looking towards Lake Washington. The building increases in size towards the top to utilize views and access to daylight for the most public portion of the house. A covered porch wraps the top floor capped by a roof deck to create multiple ways to live amongst the mature cedars and maples on this tight, urban site.
Rock House
Eld Inlet, WA
2021–current
status: permitting
A gathering of wooden stones around a basalt outcropping create a private landscape protected by the rooms of the house. The massing is carved and chiseled to be an extension of the rock formations that lay beneath.
2440
Portland, OR
2021-present
status: construction
client: Ryan Zygar
A masonry screen wraps a mass timber stack of sixteen units. The screen opens and closes based on the light, air, view and privacy needs of the spaces within. Each unit has light and air from at least two sides with a hidden courtyard containing outdoor circulation at the heart of the building.
