All Residential Commercial Institutional Planning Public Space Adaptive Reuse

Park Avenue

Photos by Randy Crandon
Contractor: Northmen Builders

This project adapts an existing colonial-style house into a contemporary, multi-generational home. The homeowners are a young family from India with two boys. The boys' grandparents were planning to move from India to spend more time with their grandchildren. The family has lived all over the world -- India, Singapore, California, Massachusetts -- and until they moved to this colonial style home, they lived in more contemporary spaces. They tasked us with creating an addition to the house that would feel distinctly modern, and closely connected with the outdoors. They needed to create a new bedroom suite for the grandparents, a new kitchen with separate pantry, and -- the star of the show -- a large living room and dining room that would be the new heart of the home. They wanted this room to be bright, airy, and closely knitted with the yard. They wanted it to feel different from other rooms they had been in - something unique, yet related to the place. They wanted places to sit where they were inside, but almost outside. And they wanted their kids to be able to come and go easily between the interior and a new outdoor living and play space. They also asked for a connection from their home office to outside - a challenge given that the office was on the 2nd floor of the house.

The existing building is a 2 1/2 story colonial house, typical of what you see in this region. From the street, it is a cute, simple home with large beautiful oak trees surrounding it. It has an asymmetrically pitched roof from an addition that was added to the attic level many years ago. We responded to the brief with the addition of a simple geometry that met all of the family's needs. In plan, the addition is a rectangle. The energy and specificity of the project comes in its section. The living and dining room are beneath a tall, asymmetrically pitched roof (similar in geometry to the roof over the existing house) with a vaulted ceiling and bank of skylights that runs the full length of the room. The skylights face north to let in daylight without allowing solar glare. On the south side of a room is a glass wall with sliding doors and a wide, deep window seat. The sliding doors open onto a porch, which provides a transition between inside and outside to sit, take off your shoes, and also provides shading over the large windows to prevent overheating. At the end of the room is a supersize window cased in white oak with another bench window seat with storage beneath.

As the addition connects back to the existing house, the pitched roof drops away into a flat roof over the new kitchen. Above the kitchen is a roof deck that connects to the second floor home office. In the existing first floor, we transformed the existing living room into a bedroom suite for the grandparents, and changed the old kitchen into a formal seating area with windows facing the street and backyard. We also tucked a new pantry into the space where the former dining room was located.

Now, the grandparents have moved in and the children can open the sliding doors to run between inside and outside. They can lie on the sofa and watch clouds pass or airplanes fly episodically across the skylights. Or sit in the windows and enjoy a book while feeling connected to the beautiful backyard. They can cook and entertain between inside and out, or take a welcome break from work calls by stepping out onto the new roof deck. Passing by on the street, you hardly know that this house has a story to tell just around the corner, and that a happy family is living differently than the year before.