Small house for a residence/office/personal gallery, 29’x29’ square plan with a loft and a detached garage.
The site is in a coastal, woody, older subdivision of cottages on tiny lots. The houses are closely hemmed in by boats, sheds, fences. Here on a small lot, contemporary exterior form would be a violent alien. This site condition lets us to think “soft to community and design internally; back to internal architecture.”
After a series of explorations on “openings” for interior-exterior relationship, the focus was shifted to “devices and geometry” for light diffusions and reflections. That shift opened the way to go further inward.
No views are expected from the first-floor level where only a few small windows are allocated. Instead, we obtain expansive volume and a large wall area, perfect for art display. While the first floor became a semi-enclosed space, the loft level with horizontal row of windows resembles a crow’s nest with distant views of waters amidst the treetops.
Reflected off a light-shelf all along a row of loft windows, sunlight will be conveyed into the interior on loft level, and onto the curved ceiling, which diffuses light to the lower floor. Under the curved ceiling, the sunlight will be reflected by the white stained loft floor, diffused by translucent railing panels between the storage cabinets. While cabinets are silhouetted in the view from below, the soft indirect light fills the space smoothly, evenly, calmly. And occasionally, an unexpected light scene appears on the ceiling and walls. Small corner windows on the side walls inject indirect light onto the north wall, and sometime, a low angled west light catches the window, casts straight line from west to east ends. We find an experiential sunlight observatory in a single box house.
The simple form was perfect to apply a Passive House strategy. A double-walled frame construction incorporates high performance insulation, windows and doors. The all-electric home uses energy-star appliances, LED lights, a hi-performance water heater, an ERV, and WaterSense plumbing fixtures. Inline duct fans draw warm air from the top of the space into the insulated basement, through a dehumidifier, and circulates back. The sanitary system incorporates two septic tanks to isolate the toilet waste to passively contain excess nitrogen.
