An Inside Look at Barndominium Kits and Prices

Have you ever wished you could travel back in time? Well, there’s a place that will…

Mercer Modern is a midcentury home located on a hillside on a 15,539 SF lot in Mercer Island, WA overlooking Lake Washington. The original house had great bones but was disconnected from the outdoors. Wittman Estes wanted to give the family a way to live outside and connect with their Southern California roots. Originally built in 1969, the post and beam structure had fallen into disrepair, and had a layout that was out of sync with the casual modern lifestyle for a young family with two children. The owner is Melanie Owen, a fashion designer with a keen interest in interior design and outdoor living. Originally from Southern California, her design sensibilities were rooted in SoCal surfer culture and the casual and open vibes of beach living. Both Melanie and her husband, Matt, work in fashion and clothing and have deep interests in texture, materiality, and a spaces with a comfortable lived-in feeling. Ms. Owen’s roots in Southern California brought a love for bright, light tones, and simple open spaces. Together with the architect, this vibe was mixed with Pacific Northwest traditions of wood tones and highly crafted built-in furniture. The goal was to create spaces that had both the qualities of Southern California modernism with a warmer, high quality carpentry that the Puget Sound region is known for. The outdoor deck has a ipe decking and built in seating. Cedar slat walls screen the neighboring houses while allowing the sunlight to filter through the screens. The kitchen was reconfigured to orient to the outdoors encourage an easy connection between the living room, dining room, and outdoor space. A concrete and glass stair connect the upper terrace to the garden and landscape. “We sought to connect the spaces in so the family could be relaxed and cruise barefoot going indoors and out”, says Wittman. The breezy and lightweight feeling of the material palette encourages the family to step outside and connect with the sunlight and views over Lake Washington and towards the downtown Seattle skyline. Project Credits Architect: Wittman Estes Design Team: Matt Wittman AIA LEED AP, Jody Estes, Hayley Snider Structural Engineer: Josh Welch Engineering Builder: Ian Jones, Treebird Construction Photography: Rafael Soldi

Sited on a site slightly under an acre in the heart of the Pacific Palisades area of Los Angeles, the site for this estate residence descends over thirty feet from top to bottom. Narrow at the street and widening toward the rear, the building was designed to appear as a very private single story structure from the street and expand as the house moves into the site. At just under 14,000 sq. ft. the house was conceived of as a California Modernist Estate the building utilizes the site slope and widening to create a wing typology each reaching into the site to capture garden spaces, set up views and account for service amenities. Designed for peak privacy to the street, there are a series of site walls and fencing that define the property edge. After passing through the gate, the entry to the house is through a descending Entry Garden with water feature with a view through the house to the slopes of Will Rodgers State Park beyond. Shaped as a modified T, the wings of the house extend into the landscape creating separate wings dedicated to the elaborate programming of the building. Containing formal spaces for Entry, Living and Dining the house also offers a large entertainment style kitchen, Large Family Room, Library, 16 person Theater, Wine Cellar, Gym with Spa Bath including Sauna and Steam Room, secondary winter closets, dedicated two bedroom Guest House as well as six bedrooms including a Master Suite over 1,500 square feet with his and hers baths and closets as well as a garage for seven plus additional carport parking for three. All of this is balanced with a series of large exterior decks, patios and pool all wrapping around the stately eighty-foot tall Eucalyptus tree, which served as the aesthetic basis for the materiality of the building. Balancing the solidity of the extensive board form concrete walls is an expansive use of glass and the warmth of stained wood siding throughout the building. The remainder of the building is wrapped in integral colored steel troweled stucco. This palette is based on the colors and tones of the tree that is the center of the garden. Passing materials from the interior to the exterior, doors disappearing into internal pockets and flooring extending onto the decks and patios all help to create a seamless relationship for the interior to the exterior, house to land. This relationship realizes a full use of the site for its entire acre site.

We love the going out once in a while to that fancy restaurant for which you need to dress up a touch. It is an experience that we tend to reserve for special occasions. On a more regular basis, we like our hangouts to be much less formal, far more inviting and even a little […]

You’re reading Raw Concrete Beauty Coupled with Earthen Green Charm Inside Elegant Aussie Restaurant, originally posted on Decoist. If you enjoyed this post, be sure to follow Decoist on Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest.