Project Details
- Project Name
- Secret Garden House
- Architect
- Levitt Architects
- Project Types
- Custom Home
- Project Scope
- New Construction
- Size
- 3,575 sq. feet
- Year Completed
- 2016
- Awards
- 2017 AIA Colorado Design Awards
- Shared by
- Ashleigh Popera
- Project Status
- Built
- Cost
- $1,600,000
Project Description
FROM THE ARCHITECTS:
This project was unusual in many ways. The owner was an inventor who bought a 50's era house with a walkout basement. We were originally hired to renovate and expand the home. The foundation was constructed of unreinforced concrete block. When the owner started watering his lawn, to his shock and dismay the expansive soils literally began to tear his house apart. The expanding soil cracked block and exploded windows. Faced with deciding between band-aids and scraping the existing, he chose the latter.
The owner had worked for years as a high-tech industrial machinist, creating large scale centrifuges at Lawrence Livermore National Labs among other projects. His knowledge and interest in materials and precision we're beyond any individual in my experience. He had lived for the last decade on a sailboat which he had commissioned to be built and was docked in San Francisco Bay.
The mission became clear after many hours of discussion; design a house as tight and efficient as a ship, as precise as a Swiss watch, and as interesting and innovative as the client himself, with a focus on using industrial materials and processes in novel ways. In addition, do this while integrating the design into a traditional and relatively small scaled neighborhood. The residence was tasked to be extremely fire resistant as summer wildfires were fueling his concerns of an imminent disaster and he wished to be the last house standing.
The project was located on a tight residential lot with potential views to the mountains. The existing oversize garage at the rear of the lot was still in good shape and it was decided that this would be reconfigured by creating a viewing deck above surrounded by a green roof with his workshop below. A modernist folly in the garden.
Pragmatically, we needed to address the extremely expansive soils, and make sure the site would drain well to mitigate future problems. We would encourage natural cooling, using the garden to deliver cooler air, high operable windows to vent heat.
In addition to the client's goals, I wanted to integrate the house and the site to maximize connections to the land and climate. Even though situated on a tight residential block, The site exists in close proximity to one of the most magnificent parks on the Front Range. Although totally surrounded by houses we formed a strategy of creating both intimate and expansive views to extend the feeling within the house into the landscape.
As a firm, our consistent goal has been to reveal the deeply sensual potential of modernism through the refined interplay of light and materials. This guiding purpose informed all of our decisions along the way.
The site was excavated in order to fully expose the house in a level garden. The radiant heated structural slab rests upon helical piers. The site was retained with porous gabions and steel landscape walls. Drainage was designed to move water to the rear alley where it empties safely into the municipal system.
Placing the house on grade in a sunken garden accomplished several goals simultaneously. We created intimate views and connections to the garden on the living level while creating mountain views from the library and master bedroom above. The street facade is angled south towards the view. The scale of a full two story residence is reduced to one story from the street.
The sunken garden is experienced as private even though it is at the front of the house, while still affording views of the mountains.
We were interested in the techniques and economies of scale of precast concrete, and found an industrial fabricator who would work with us to fabricate the walls in pieces. We were exploring the aesthetics, fireproof capacity, production methods, speed of construction, and energy conservation potentialities of the material. The massive north concrete wall allowed us to embed welding plates to efficiently construct the floating entry stair and glass guard rail, it's significant weight easily supported by that wall.
The concrete walls were assembled by crane in three days. This "Lego set" strategy made it intuitive to leave gaps for narrow glazing to wash interior walls with side light and large openings for glass sliding doors, each of which retracts into a recessed opening leaving the ground floor to extend unimpeded into the garden.
The stair which appears to float weightlessly is a precise piece of magic. It sits in the entry hall contrasting and celebrating the density of the concrete walls which allow it to float. The dichroic light modulator we designed above the stair and below the skylight refracts and reflects complementary colors which continually vary with the angle and azimuth of the sun. By registering daily and seasonal change, it washes the wall with a virtual clock/calendar which one learns to read when spending time in the house.
Although much of the ground floor plan is open to allow intimate connection with the garden and for air flow, the spaces are differentiated through changes in section and materials. The central kitchen is wrapped in a container of shiplap white oak with 1/2" reveal. The splines have been removed in places to allow LED strip lights to form cloud like patterns of illumination in the wood ceiling which disappear when switched off.
A large glazed clerestory between library and master bedroom allows the chimney effect to keep the house cool.
Floor materials are not precisely aligned with sectional changes so that they slip and slide between spaces, communicating connection between rooms. Polished concrete, rift sawn white oak, and stone tile overlap room to room, indoors to outdoors, to simultaneously suggest spacial connection and differentiation.