Lookout House

A modestly-sized home in a dense neighborhood.

The existing home had suffered the ignominy of several poorly conceived additions, modifications and refashioning efforts that left the resulting amalgamation with an identity crisis. Perhaps most bizarre was the oddly-conceived wedge located at the approach side of the site that very poorly housed a tiny bathroom squeezed into the high end of the space.

A design strategy was developed within the many project parameters, which included no change to the building footprint, to create a new volume that was generated through the extrusion of the existing vernacular massing, which was then manipulated to house the expanded program.

While the existing footprint of the house and the existing massing of the house were generative design forces, the resulting volume made no attempt to blend into the amorphous slush of the existing homes vocabulary. Instead, the form-based solution is the unapologetic expression of the specific efficiency, function, program and budget of this particular project.

Idiosyncratic and whimsical, a new spirit blossoms through the lifeless and confused gray suburban house reflecting the energy of the young family who lives here.