Written by Thomas Fisher Excerpt from The Invisible Element of Place The Architecture of David Salmela
Few people live over the store any more. That once‐common integration of our lives with our livelihoods has largely disappeared as we have segregated our existence into separate realms of job and family, a division reflected in how we lay out our cities. Through single‐use zoning, we have kept different functions physically distinct and often quite distant from each other, resulting in people having long commutes and little time for play between the demands of living and working.
David Salmela’s home and office reflects there is a trend that is beginning to grow across North America. Buoyed by digital technology that let’s us work from almost any location, increasing numbers of people now workout of their homes or live above their offices. David Salmela does a little of both, showing in his own residence how this reincorporation of our public and private lives can lead to new and more playful forms of living and working.
Most houses separate public and private activities, with living and dining areas kept apart from sleeping and bathing rooms. The return of work to the home, often in the form of the home office, does not easily fit that old formula. Salmela’s house both integrates and separates public and private pursuits, offering a model of what it means to live above the store in the twenty‐first century.
From the mid point of the garage in the side of the house, you have two choices. You can follow the stone retaining wall down the slope to the gravel yard and the glass door that leads to Salmela’s office or you can take the concrete steps, with their horizontal timber rails, up and over the rock ledge, where you come to a wood deck, an open‐face white‐painted fire place, and another set of steps that lead to the front door of the house. The very nature of these dual entries indicates the difference in how this house accommodates both living and working: Salmela gives his home and office their own entrances, equidistant from the point of arrival and as faraway as possible from each other.
Clad in durable black Skatelite panels, the house has horizontal bands of projecting aluminum flashing that not only protect the resinous recycled‐paper panels from moisture, but also express the layers of functions within: office at lowest level, garage and office at the midlevel, main living spaces above that, and a guest area at the top. The flashing serves, as well, to lighten the visual heaviness of the dark cladding, providing deep shadow lines that highlight its blackness. Likewise, large windows, white columns, and the natural wood railings and decks that wrap around the house contrast nicely with the black skin. That contrast becomes even more pronounced on the interior. Whether you enter at the lower level into the light‐ filled office or at the upper level into the main living areas, you go from a largely black‐and‐silver exterior to an interior of white walls, expansive aluminum windows, and warm wood trim. The dark‐gray tile floors and the deep blue‐purple ceiling and central skylight over the kitchen further emphasize the brightness and expansiveness of the interior.
