10
Portland, OR
2022-present
status: permitting
client: Ryan Zygar
A galvanized curtain wraps this terraced mass timber live-work building. The curtain opens and closes depending on the needs for light, privacy, and ventilation throughout the building. The stepped massing emphasizes the street wall of an established Portland urban corridor while respecting the smaller scale of the adjacent single-family neighborhood.
The building contains a mix of uses including retail, live-work lofts, one- and two-bedroom apartments, as well as multiple community gathering areas with views onto the courtyard and street, with a shared amenity room on the lower roof with views east over the neighborhood to Mount Hood beyond.
Utilizing a simple palette of locally fabricated mass plywood floors, beams, and columns, the densely packed terraced section is unified with a corrugated and in places perforated skin of galvanized steel. Each dwelling unit, retail, and community space has light and ventilation from two sides thanks to the courtyard, creating a new model for infill mixed-use buildings in Portland. The future home of DTA will be in one of the live-work lofts facing into the courtyard.
Joshua Tree, CA
2023–current
status: permitting
A small, white building sits up amongst the boulders and creosote brush at the base of the Bartlett Mountains, overlooking the northern plains of Joshua Tree. The simple horizontal massing conceals a luminous desert sanctuary within.
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2630
Portland, OR
2024-present
status: design
client: Ryan Zygar
Two four-story housing blocks frame a shared courtyard opening out onto the North Lombard thoroughfare. The buildings’ character is given by continuous wrap-around balconies that create deep relief and articulation, while offering generous covered private outdoor space to residents. All vertical and horizontal circulation is around lushly planted courts open to the sky. Clad in perforated weathering steel, the buildings change in transparency throughout the day, allowing varied glimpses of the diverse life within.
Building upon experience with our friends and development partners, with an increase in scale, apartment types, and a mix of market rate and affordable housing at a much needed time for our city, this project is in development with an anticipated construction start in late 2025.
Lombard
Portland, OR
2021-present
status: construction
client: Ryan Zygar
Entering into dialogue with the multiple industrial structures along this North Portland arterial, and the large electrical substation nearby, the cedar-clad courtyard building is wrapped by a corrugated galvalume skin that is perforated in areas to allow for glimpses of activity in the circulation zone of this dense infill building.
Madrona House
Seattle, WA
completed 2021
3300 sf
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.
collaboration: Carsten Stinn Architecture
contractor: PH Robison
photographer: Kevin Scott
recognition:
Madrona House in the New York Times, Portrait, ArchDaily
AIA Oregon Citation Award 2023
Seattle, WA
completed 2021
3300 sf
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.
collaboration: Carsten Stinn Architecture
contractor: PH Robison
photographer: Kevin Scott
recognition:
Madrona House in the New York Times, Portrait, ArchDaily
AIA Oregon Citation Award 2023
