Wheeler Kearns

A broad, introverted, opaque volume of private spaces floats above a fully transparent, extroverted space at grade that extends, below the canopy of the volume above, into the garden.  This urban residence is a warm, intimate home for a family of four that can transform into a place of assembly as needed and has an integral connection between interior and exterior experiences.

Light and air courts, terminating in a series of reflecting pools, perforate the volume and extend vertically through the house to distribute reflected light, and activate the interior with rain and snow; further reinforcing the blurred boundaries of interior and exterior space.

A collaborative design process led to architectural and structural innovations that include vertically post-tensioned concrete thermal mass with forty foot cantilevers; pultruded fiberglass wide-flanges, filled with closed cell spray foam insulation, sheathed in aerated autoclaved concrete and pigmented cement stucco; thermally broken floor to ceiling glass curtain wall and sliding door system.

construction - norcon, inc.; structural - thornton tomasetti; consulting engineer - james carpenter design associates; MEP engineer - ibc engineering; interiors - leslie jones & associates; lighting - charter sills; acoustics - acoustic expertise; landscape architects - Mckay landscape architecture, xavier vendrell studio; photography - steve hall, jon miller, craig dugan-hedrich blessing; video - spirit of space