Cook’s team designed a single-story space with an open layout. Sliding doors and mobile partitions on wheels can be configured to create different layouts for living and working, eliminating the costs and landfill waste associated with residential remodeling.

Clad with fiber cement board and wrapped in an MDO plywood solar screen, the building doesn’t resemble a house so much as a small commercial or industrial structure—an impression enhanced by a garage-style bifold door that opens onto the front porch. A photograph of dappled sunlight filtering through treetops was enlarged and pixelated to create the perforation pattern in the screen, which is cut in places into swiveling panels that can be turned to create shade or to bounce light into the house.

The pine floor was salvaged from the dilapidated shotgun house that was deconstructed to make way for Live Work Home, and the kitchen cabinets were fashioned from wood from a nearby warehouse that was gutted to create condominiums. “It relates by story back to how the building was made,” says Pam Campbell, a senior associate at Cook + Fox. “It makes the building more related to the place and connected to it.”

Project: Live Work Home
Design team: Cook + Fox Architects and Terrapin Bright Green, New York
Size: 1,400 square feet