Colleen Healey Architecture inserts glass kitchen under historic porches of Washington DC home
Local studio Colleen Healey Architecture has teamed up with Lynley Oglvie Landscape Design to renovate an early 20th century house alongside a private meadow in Washington DC. The aptly named Hidden Meadow home was built in 1917 as an American Four Square – with four rooms on the main floor and a roughly square footprint The post Colleen Healey Architecture inserts glass kitchen under historic porches of Washington DC home appeared first on Dezeen.
Local studio Colleen Healey Architecture has teamed up with Lynley Oglvie Landscape Design to renovate an early 20th century house alongside a private meadow in Washington DC.
The aptly named Hidden Meadow home was built in 1917 as an American Four Square – with four rooms on the main floor and a roughly square footprint – near the then ongoing construction of the Washington National Cathedral.
Colleen Healey Architecture updated the 7,400-square-foot (687-square-metre) house with eight bedrooms and two offices that is separated from a garage with an in-law suite by a 25-foot (7.6-metre) meadow designed by Virginia-based Lynley Oglvie Landscape Design.
"The project goal was to be functional and minimal but still warm in tone and textural richness," the team told Dezeen.
The team worked to retain the original, elevated sleeping porches, supporting them on steel columns while a light-weight box that holds a new kitchen and dining space was inserted on the north end of the ground floor.
The studio also added a screened porch to the house and a detached garage and pool house with a guest suite.
"The transition from the original historic home to the new addition is achieved through a new open steel frame that allowed removal of the majority of the rear facade of the original home," the team said.
"The floor transitions from wood to concrete at this point and the new kitchen and dining room, which extends out to the screened porch, are located in this new volume slotted beyond the original house."
Inside the original home, the studio refinished the original, three-level staircase and banister, retaining the historic elements that give the home character.
The interiors blend the wooden structure of the original home – exposed by the partial dismantling of a pocket door – with curved plaster features.
Foam molds allowed the plaster to be set in tight radii around corners and be sculpted into a thin kitchen ceiling that conceals the floor structure of the sleeping porches above.
"Mirrors sitting above the sculpted ceiling and below the skylights bounce light down into the space and blur the relationship between the ceiling treatment and the floating white ceiling," the studio said.
"Mirrors were also used between the back of the kitchen cabinets and the glass of the window wall to blur the line between glass and garden."
Meanwhile, the team brought in natural materials – like a slate slab for the fireplace hearth and walnut finishes – to add warmth, depth and a handmade quality to the space.
On the outside, the addition is composed of Accoya siding and floor-to-ceiling windows that juxtapose the gray pebble dash stucco.
The guest house blends a weathered zinc standing-seam roof with an Accoya trellis that mimics the rhythm of the home's windows and is a climbing structure for honeysuckle.
"Because we were located in a historic district where the garage was visible from the street on the western side, we did numerous massing studies to reduce the visual scale of the new structure," the team said.
"The end result presents itself as a one-story building with a small dormer above."
The central meadow mediates the zoning requirement while creating a place for fresh herbs and vegetables to grow in Corten planters.
Previously, Colleen Healey Architecture added Corten steel and cedar cladding to a Maryland home renovation, exposed historic ceiling joists in a 1883 Logan's Circle home and brightened up a Maryland carriage house with colourful panels.
The photography is by Jennifer Hughes.
Project Credits:
Architect: Colleen Healey Architecture
Staff designers: Blake Massie and Casey Meyer
Landscape designer: Lynley Ogilvie
Builder: Zuckerman Builders
Civil engineer: CAS Engineering
Structural engineer: George Norton Engineering
Kitchen cabinetry: Boffi
Windows and doors: The Sanders Company – Loewen and Windsor Windows
The post Colleen Healey Architecture inserts glass kitchen under historic porches of Washington DC home appeared first on Dezeen.
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