Net Positive by Pigment

Q and A with Miche Booz 
by Beth Herman

Swiss-born and French bred (that's bred, not bread), Miche Booz of Miche Booz Architect spent a peripatetic childhood navigating the neighborhoods of Jordan, Pakistan and Indonesia.


















With a developmental economist father (also an admitted closet interior designer who coveted Danish Modern), and writer/ illustrator/ painter mother, Booz grew up in the shadow of iconic architecture like the Taj Mahal and Eiffel Tower, and without television, which left considerable time to cultivate his own artistic DNA. Though the young Miche trained his pencils and brushes on favorite military tanks and boats, as an architect he has turned his attention to painterly (and/or colored pencil) executions of design, much in the manner of Le Corbusier. DCMud spoke with Booz about his art and how he has applied it to his latest project: a 2,000 s.f., 3-bedroom, 2-bath net positive residence scheduled for momentary groundbreaking in Clarksville, Maryland.

DCMud: Why do you draw and paint as opposed to using 21st Century technology?

Booz: I went to art school and got into watercolor, and liked the medium a lot, before I came to architecture at age 32. It's not the only medium I use, though I find it the most evocative and it helps me design and understand things in a more tactile way. There's something that goes on when you actually have a colored pencil or a brush in your hand that connects you to the architecture and helps you work out design solutions.

DCMud: When does technology come into play?

Booz: We're an office of four, and the three others here use it more than I do: AutoCAD and SketchUp. I don't design on the computer at all.

DCMud: So with all that, how did the Clarksville net positive project come into your orbit?

Booz: I've known Ed Gaddy, a solar energy engineer for spacecraft, since 1980. We've had dialogues over the years about doing an energy efficient house. A few years ago he found a 1 1/2-story Cape three minutes' walk from where he works. As an environmentalist, among other things he wanted to walk to work to conserve his carbon footprint.

DCMud: Describe the property.

Booz: It's 1.2 acres on a south-facing lot. The existing house was not very energy-efficient, and we determined we could not effectively renovate it into such. There is that truism that the greenest house you build is the one you don't tear down; in this case we'd have had to disassemble it so much it would've been akin to tearing it down. That said, we are actually keeping the first floor deck and the basement underneath for storage, and building a platform with a sculptural, prismatic object that we're putting the solar array on. The house will be built next to it and is a composition of two squares: A public square and a private square. The kitchen/pantry/living area has a taller roof, and then bedrooms and bathrooms are under the lower roof.


DCMud: What about the net positive aspect of this house?

Booz: It may be a little tongue-in-cheek, but Ed's special goal is to have the most energy-efficient house in Maryland -- he's going for the trifecta of certifications. He wants to have a Passive House (Passive House Institute U.S., or PHIUS) - a German performance-based certification program whose principles have a long history in the U.S. that addresses air tightness, insulation and energy use. PHIUS is less interested in materials and site strategies than LEED and Living Building Challenge are. But he's also going for LEED Platinum, and for the Living Building Challenge.

DCMud: Rather ambitious objectives. With all of that, how are you going to achieve net positive -- to build a home that produces more energy than it uses?

Booz: For one thing, we rotated the house directly south, which is one reason for building a new one, for purposes of solar gain. It has architecturally integrated solar panels, and we also have a couple of thermal solar panels on top of a shed behind the house for hot water.

The exterior is concrete block and corrugated metal. The roof is a standing seam Galvalume, and it all sits on a polished concrete slab.

DCMud: Tell us about insulation.

Booz: It's going to use very little energy to heat and cool with highly insulated walls, roof and slab insulation: R-Values are 68, 100 and 38, respectively. In fact the R-Value of the Zola window glazing is 11.1 -- comparable to the R-Value of 3.5-inch thick fiberglass batt that's found in many homes.

The one thing this house does is avoid thermal bridging, where you have structure or components of the house that conduct either heat or cold through the wall out into the environment or from the environment back in. It takes an insulated covering that wraps not only up and down the walls and around the roof, but down in front of the foundation wall and under the footing, so the footing doesn't touch the earth. It's sitting on insulation. The entire house is wrapped, which is different than the way most houses are built.

In fact one of the challenges was finding an HVAC system that's small enough to heat and cool this house as it takes so little. We're using a Mini-Split Mitsubishi system, which is the smallest one they make. There's an ERV and 0.6 air changes per hour -- an extremely tight envelope

DCMud: From your paintings it appears there is extensive fenestration, including a huge south-facing exposure with all that this can imply.

Booz: We have high performance windows facing south that offer shading, and an innovative system of translucent exterior roller shades that automatically deploy over these windows to prevent overheating.

DCMud: Interesting you should talk about these key exterior shades, as we did a story with Mark McInturff where they figured prominently into the design.

Booz: The architect who has influenced me most strongly is Mark McInturff, under whom I worked for nearly six years. His language is contemporary architecture and he has a wonderful sense of design. His buildings are light-filled and sustainable, and also very beautiful -- he has a wonderful sense of color and proportion and extreme attention to detail. With his work, the closer you get the better it looks, as opposed to a lot of modern architecture where you get the Gestalt right up front but the closer you look, the more banal it gets.

Arlington's "Not So Big House"

Q and A with Krista Minotti Schauer
by Beth Herman


Descended from a designing family, Principal Krista Minotti Schauer of KMS Architecture believes the profession is in her genes. At age 18, her grandfather labored on NYC's Chrysler building and then became a builder; her father studied architecture and building sciences at Clemson University; and her mother is an artist whose finely detailed work informs Schauer's.

In an effort to modernize and make more functional a 1923 3-bedroom, 2-bath farmhouse in Arlington, Virginia, without adding a lot of space, Schauer said she was inspired by architect and "The Not So Big House" author Sarah Susanka, having heard her speak at an AIA Convention. Though some additional square footage was required, Schauer, like Susanka, elected to scale back the amount of new space favoring quality and function over quantity.  DCMud spoke with Schauer about the project.

DCMud:Tell us about the home and program.

Schauer: The original home was minimal in terms of any detail, but it had the character they liked -- 8'6" ceilings -- that old farmhouse motif. This needed to remain, but it needed to live in the 21st Century and accommodate a family of four. There was an addition on the back off the kitchen -- a full bathroom -- something useless and quirky.

The project started as the homeowner's idea for a family room on the back, not planning to redo the kitchen, and for a second floor master suite leaving the existing bedrooms intact. But once we got through the design portion, they understood that the flow/circulation of the house needed to change, which would involve the kitchen.

DCMud: But even with that information, much more changed for the homeowners at that point, correct?

Schauer: It certainly did. In 2009, during a time of inflated appraisals, though we already had a contractor on board and permit in hand, the client's financing suddenly fell through for the construction loan as the house didn't appraise the same way. The construction industry was also not on board with green building, which was a goal here. While we'd originally designed for the existing 3 bedrooms and 2 baths upstairs, we had to creatively change it to a 5-bedroom, 2.5-bath.

This was done by reworking a smaller enclosed porch on the side of the house, which had ultimately appraised for no value and which a previous owner had turned into a den. In the original design, we were going to take that living space and turn it into a long covered porch along the side of the house. We'd have had an extension on the back, and then the long covered porch.

DCMud: So how did this change?

Schauer: As the appraisal considered square footage over most anything else, along with number of bedrooms and number of bathrooms, we abandoned the porch idea and maintained the first floor's square footage by creating a TV/office space and half bath, so it could actually read as a spare bedroom. We then added more second floor to the existing second floor, on top of that space, creating another bedroom there. The result was two existing front bedrooms, the new one, and then the master -- a total of four upstairs.While it did add square footage to the second floor, it did not add to the property's footprint which made it cost and environmentally effective.

DCMud: Speaking of the environment, what sustainable elements are found in this redesign, along with choices of color, etc.

Schauer: Fairly early on, the owners wanted wide reclaimed oak flooring with color variation and a rough-hewn texture. We knew it would be a feature and focal point of the home. And going back to the Shaker-like minimalism of a farmhouse, I'd initially envisioned a neutral palette, interior and exterior. We replaced the exterior with Hardiplank because the original was in such bad shape. And it's got so many massing elements on the back, painting it white brought a cohesiveness to the home. Accordingly, I thought the interior would be the same -- light-filled and a light palette so as not to compete with the wood floors. But the owners wanted black cabinets in the kitchen, which did provide a nice contrast.


DCMud: The walls appear to be bold jewel tones, not the quiet colors you mentioned.

Schauer: When it came time to paint, the owner's vision was different than mine. She wanted lots of color, and she was right. We did one accent wall in a really dark green - almost black. That same color is in the TV room, but there's a glass door from the living room into the TV room, so that black becomes a background and visually balances the TV room with the black cabinets in the kitchen. With small spaces and small houses, having a visual window, so to speak, from one space to the next makes it feel much larger and more open. In this house, the dining room is a defined space off of the living room, but it's got a wide cased opening between the two so you still get that visual connection from one to the other. When you're in one space, your eye is borrowing space from the adjacent space.

DCMud: What did you take away from this project, which was apparently full of economic and architectural twists and turns.

Schauer: A piece of architecture works as a whole: the interior and exterior have to relate to one other. And, the most successful projects are a collaboration like this one when contractor, owner and architect work together under evolving circumstances.

Intervention as Art

Q and A with Steven Spurlock of Wnuk Spurlock Architects 
by Beth Herman

Fostering a relationship that began more than 30 years ago, Steven Spurlock of Wnuk Spurlock Architects was commissioned to create a new 5,250 s.f. hybrid art studio/woodworking shop/office/gallery/storage space for maverick artist Sam Gilliam, a significant force in the former Washington Color School. Commandeering a small industrial building in the District's Brightwood neighborhood that had seen its share of rather disjointed incursions, Spurlock and project architect Marcy Giannunzio proceeded to transform the ragged space through a series of artful interventions. It went on to receive the AIA's 2012 Award of Excellence in Interior Architecture. DCMud spoke with Spurlock about the process.


DCMud: Describe the site as you found it.

Spurlock: The city square that it sits on is trapezoidal in shape, facing 14th Street with Longfellow as a side street, then Colorado cuts diagonally across the back. There was originally a brick masonry commercial structure of some nature on the southwest corner of the property.  At some point it was converted to a gas station. Later, using the two existing masonry walls on either side, someone built a wall on the backside and one on the front side and put a roof over everything, which essentially created an office area in the front a big warehouse area in the back. There aren't a lot of uses for that kind of space in the city, so it was one of those wonderful finds for Sam.

DCMud: What gave you the idea to employ, in your words, "multiple programmatic freestanding interventions" - essentially to accord each entity (studio; woodworking shop; gallery; office; etc.) its own personality?

Spurlock: The client definitely wanted something that had a rawness or an edginess to it - not to have it look all pretty and new. For instance we took the old masonry structure and made it into storage. As some of his pieces are constructions -- he sometimes will paint on pieces of metal or plywood, and introduce pieces of canvas with that -- the need for a separate woodworking shop was imminent to fabricate the wood pieces. And you cannot have the wood shop and a paint shop in the same places for dust issues.


DCMud: The office space with its bamboo flooring appears to be more of an oasis.

Spurlock: The office intervention is kind of a box in a box. It was meant to be a freestanding element that you dropped into the space. As we stopped to think about it, we realized the whole building should look like a container with little interventions introduced into it so you could read a history of how the space evolved: the tension between the old and new parts. Above the office we put a balcony and glass rail. This was done compositionally to make the office box look more attractive, and the artist also likes to go up and see things from a different perspective as part of the creative process.

DCMud: Describe the artist's studio space.

Spurlock: It was the block wall when we first started, and because he's in there all the time we knew we had to insulate it. We used canvases of white painted drywall to provide a neutral backdrop for the composition and display of art, as Sam likes to hang what he's working on to contemplate it. We cut windows into the drywall to reveal sections of the old masonry in between for contrast. At the party walls, the drywall is partial height and pulled away from the corners so it appears to float in a wall of masonry. At the exterior, it goes full height for improved thermal insulation of the building. All of the walls are built with studs, covered with plywood, and then there's drywall on top of the plywood to allow him to hang heavy items anywhere he wants. It was a nice contrast to the old brick - to create that juxtaposition of the old and new.

DCMud: Artists usually require a prodigious amount of light. How was this addressed?

Spurlock: We grouped 10 skylights in the center to control the natural light - didn't want them washing out the walls at all times. Along the perimeter, where the hanging walls are, we put in a lot of high tech lighting fixtures to illuminate the pieces on individually-controlled dimmers. For evenings or cloudy days, there are color temperature-corrected fluorescent lights that we installed in a playful pattern to make the space less static. Solar voltaic panels on the roof allow the artist to generate his own electricity to satisfy his interest in energy conservation.


DCMud: Was there some, perhaps more personal element of the  design that came as a surprise?

Spurlock: One of Sam Gilliam's early breakthroughs as an artist in the 1960s was a stained canvas that he draped from the ceiling, or over things. In his former studio, he didn't have enough space to do that and he'd not done it in years.When he got into the new space, he realized he could once again do that, which was a really nice benefit for him to be able to go back to his roots if he wanted.

photos courtesy of Anice Hoachlander

Beauty and the Barn

Q and A with John Blackburn
by Beth Herman

Celebrated equestrian architect John Blackburn of Blackburn Architects, PC, also known for his deft restorations and renovations of historical properties, was charged with resurrecting a post Civil War-era bank barn, where the lower portion of the structure is built into a hillside, and where the foundation actually predated the war. Desiring a barn conversion where the 2,590 s.f. structure would be used for entertaining, much of the site design was driven by the client's wife, whose environmental concerns and adopted green practices resulted in an effort to preserve as much of the severely deteriorating historic structure as possible. The project received an AIA Merit Award in Historic Resources and Southern Living magazine's Home Award in Historic Restoration. DCMud spoke with Blackburn about the project.

DCMud: Tell is about the genesis of this historic structure and its metamorphosis.

Blackburn: It's my understanding that the bank barn foundation dates back to before the Civil War. It's on the banks of the Potomac in Loudoun County, Virginia, probably less than a mile from the Battle of Ball's Bluff (aka the Battle of Leesburg, October 21, 1861). I would imagine the barn was burned down at one point and rebuilt in the 1870s. The saw marks on the timber tell us the barn itself is post Civil War.

The open concept design includes an ample kitchen and a sleeping loft, so somebody can stay there overnight. An old corn crib on the south side of the bank barn has been converted to a sundeck on top, with view of the extensive horse farm to the west, and underneath it's a place for workers and caterers to pull in and conveniently unload trays and equipment out of view of any guests.

DCMud: What was the program for the bank barn?

Blackburn: In addition to extended family gatherings, it was to be used for meetings, receptions, office retreats, etc. The basement stores some of the family's classic cars, go-carts and other recreational equipment.

DCMud: What strategy did you use in adapting an historic structure like this for modern purposes?

Blackburn: My goal in doing any project like this is that when you walk away from it, you close it up and it appears like it originally was: a barn. Whenever I renovate an original structure I like to respect its original use and perpetuate that to any degree possible, though here the northeast facade was replaced with floor-to-ceiling glass that provides panoramic vistas of the property and Potomac.

DCMud: What about the exterior?

Blackburn: It's been completely reclad, as it had to be, in SIPs (structurally insulated panels) and new board-and-batten skin. How you clad and insulate these old buildings is important. We did this barn in original plywood--the one that goes against the original siding we paint black, so when you see through the cracks in the original barn board you don't see anything: It's all black. To support that, we bolted into a 12x12 timber that ran around the perimeter a stainless steel shelf angle which carries the weight of the panel. The panel sits on that and is screwed into the timber frame of the barn, and you add normal building paper and barn boards on the outside of that panel just like what was found the original barn. So on the inside you see the original boards and on the outside are new boards, but you can't tell the difference.

DCMud: The interior seems to maintain the barn's rusticity while courting air and light.

Blackburn: Interior materials and finishes are exactly from the original except where pieces were added to strengthen the structure or replace rotted board. Flooring is oak, as is the timber. We rebuilt the existing double sliding doors. After they are opened, behind them you have a double French glazed glass door  entrance which lets in a lot of natural light and ventilation, but when you walk away, you close the barn doors so as not to see them, and the look of the original barn is maintained.

DCMud: During many barn conversions, we see items like patios and decks.

Blackburn: Many times when people want to renovate something like this they'll put a deck on it and that's a sure sign that it's no longer a barn but a residence. I didn't want to do that. Subsequently on the east side, where additional double barn doors were falling off, I did the same as on the front side: We rebuilt the barn doors and put French glazed glass doors behind it. When you open these 6-foot wide doors, instead of a deck sticking outside of the barn that doesn't fit, your interior space now becomes your deck. A railing behind the barn doors but in front of the French doors prevents any egress. As mentioned earlier the corn crib on the south side was turned into a deck, but it is out of view.

DCMud: There were other barns on the property, so did you preserve them too?

Blackburn: We used barn siding on the interior of the bank barn, for example the sliding door in the kitchen and paneling in the bathroom. We had an existing barn on the north end that was falling apart, and we used the wood for this one. I've also learned from designing over 160 horse barns (some from historic beginnings) that these structures tend to be organic: Over the years, farmers would add a window here, a lean-to there, etc., so that it grows as you'd find with an industrial building. We did punch in a couple of windows so that light was channeled into a bathroom or kitchen.

DCMud: How would you summarize the work you did on this barn?

Blackburn: It responds to its historic context, and yet it responds to the site. Two of the major elements that respond to the site are the north window, which completely exposes it to the view, and the corn crib sun deck to the south which faces out over the farm but is completely hidden. These elements were melded into the context in a very successful way.

DCMud: Speaking of architecture that works, what would you count among the District's most influential designs for you?

Blackburn: There are two, though different as night and day, that I think are the best buildings in D.C. For an interior space I really like the Rotunda of the Library of Congress--the big, open reading room--which is the grandest, most beautiful, functional space. It's ornate, historic and fascinating. From the exterior, my choice has to be the Finnish Embassy. Because of its design and embellishment like the vines growing over it, it's my favorite building in D.C.

photos courtesy of Kenneth Wyner

Piazza Arriba!

Q and A with Jane Treacy of Treacy and Eagleburger Architects, PC  
By Beth Herman

Desiring a new kitchen and family room that fed into a garden space, Chevy Chase, Md. homeowners were also dealing with a deteriorating garage and non-existent backyard aesthetic. DCMud spoke with architect Jane Treacy of Treacy and Eagleburger Architects PC about reimagining the space to include a rooftop terrace—atop the garage.

DCMud: Describe the challenges of this project, which was both a renovation and new construction.

Treacy: When we came to the project—a bungalow built circa the early 1920s—there were multiple issues. These included an existing garage off the alley, which is about 8 feet down from the first floor. The yard itself was not at the exact same height as the first floor—it was reasonably higher. They wanted to keep the two-car garage, though it was falling down and popped up above grade—a bit of an albatross in the backyard/garden.

DCMud: What were the first steps?

Treacy: When we considered the family room addition, we placed it down a couple of steps so it could feed out to the garden level. We dropped the whole roof of the garage down by using a concrete slab for its roof to condense the height as much as possible and to get it to be at that same level.

DCMud: So the idea was to walk straight out and be on the roof of the garage.

Treacy: Yes, and we also terraced the stone paving over the roof. When the discussion arose about a screened porch, we decided to put it all the way at the back of the site, over the roof, and made an edge to the patio. It creates this kind of urban courtyard—a piazza. The area between the house and the screened porch is about 600 s.f. and the porch itself is 180 s.f.

DCMud: So to be clear, when you’re in the piazza with its screened porch and stone terrace, you’re on the roof of the garage.

Treacy: The terrace is half over the garage, and half over earth. So much of the design had to do with being able to pull the cars in from the alley, and then build over the top with the screen porch at the back of the terrace. There is also an enclosed stair that goes straight down into the garage.

DCMud: How did you create the family room?

Treacy: The kitchen, which we also renovated, is on the main level of the original house, and we stepped things down two steps into the family room. This allowed us to get a nice ceiling height in there—about 10 feet—and make that room very much a part of the garden space in the back. Three tall French doors with clerestory windows support the notion.

Treacy: The owners are ardent gardeners, so being able to push a really nice space into the garden as well as have a screened space out there was important. Following construction, they developed a beautiful, festive garden that integrates the space.

DCMud: You and your husband Phillip have produced such a vast body of residential work. Is there a particular D.C. architect who truly influenced you from the beginning?

Treacy: It would have to be mid-century modernist architect David Condon, who created Hollin Hills in Alexandria among other special properties. I have always been inspired by everything from his shed roofs to his fresh modern style.

Whistle Stop Design

Q and A with Sabine Roy of SR/A Interior Architecture and Design
by Beth Herman

With preserving and repurposing historic buildings at the top of their dance card, SR/A Interior Architecture and Design embarked on a challenge to transform an abandoned turn-of-the-century freight train depot into high-end public spaces for a residential development: The Apartments at Cobblestone Square, 627 Cobblestone Blvd., Fredericksburg, Va.  DCMud spoke with SR/A Principal Sabine Roy about the 10,000 s.f. redesign.

DCMud: What elements about this building struck you?

Roy: The building was this magnificent long solid brick structure with amazing 5- or 6-inch solid maple flooring. It was in bad condition; the roof was caving in. We fell in love with it when we saw it!

DCMud: How did it come to its new life?

Roy: It found itself in the middle of a development of new residential buildings, originally by K. Hovnanian Homes and slated for a condominium venture, and then sold to Home Properties as apartments. It was put in a drawer for a couple of years due to the economy but taken out again with all of its possibilities.

DCMud: Old structures often come with challenges and caveats. How did you decide what to keep and what to jettison?

Roy: We wanted to keep as much of the building's history as possible. We kept the solid brick walls and I fought to keep the flooring. You don’t see 5- or 6-inch solid maple anymore. Another battle was to save the ceiling as it was made of cedar and had no insulation. Because of its (historical fabric), we had the insulation and all the re-roofing done from the exterior to save the cedar. Usually these things are sandblasted, or high-power washed, or blasted with an equally abrasive material, but walnut shell is among the softest and used in restoration—it doesn’t attack the wood; just the coating. Once it was cleaned this way it was absolutely splendid.

DCMud: What was the thinking behind the redesign, which appears to be a real juxtaposition of history and today.

Roy: There was so much history in the building conserving the brick, the flooring, ceiling and trusses that we could go the other way and bring in modern techniques, materials, furniture and finishes to the design. The contrast between the historical building and new materials is an interesting, warm, comfortable treatment. I’m French and it’s something you see a lot in Paris, where you have all these old buildings and units with crowns and trims and pretty parquets. The best way to showcase an antique is to put something modern in it. It was the same thinking behind what we did at Foundry Lofts.

DCMud: How did you arrive at the color palette you chose, which in many ways emulates nature.

Roy: The building already had a lot of red because of the brick, so we didn’t want to do anything too urban so we went a little more traditional with warm greens, pale yellows and golds—as in the ceiling. Instead of red we did a deep purple. The colors were simple and ‘forest-y’ in keeping with the Fredericksburg environment. We had the thick maple flooring to warm it up.

DCMud: What about ambient and/or task lighting in such a vast space?

Roy: We used uplights on the 30-foot ceilings and on the trusses so you could see the height of the ceiling—the volume of the room and the beauty of the existing materials. We dropped some LED’s from the height of the trusses in the common areas. In the fitness center we dropped the lights. It was a matter of pinpoint lighting. There’s a fireplace. Even though the light is not awfully strong or bright in the club room, you really feel the space. Adding floor lamps and table lamps and partial LED’s here and there, you have enough lighting so you can see what you’re doing or where you’re walking but you are not aware of the light. It’s just a warm space.

DCMud: Speaking of warm spaces, if you could choose one area of the District that felt like home to you, what would it be?

Roy: I really like Southeast Waterfront. The park they’ve built is wonderful, and it’s where Foundry Lofts is located. But if I had to move (from Maryland), it would be to the upper part of Georgetown. It’s the European in me: I like those little houses and being able to walk to places. The old world in me is still alive.

The Teahouse of the Maryland Moon

Q and A with Amy Gardner of Gardner Mohr Architetcts LLC
By Beth Herman


Revealed during demolition, a newspaper stuffed into the wall of a Bethesda craftsman style bungalow was dated 1928. In an effort to transform the aging home into a serene and gracious residence, Amy Gardner of Gardner Mohr Architects LLC heeded the homeowner’s mandate for an Asian modern teahouse style motif where interconnected rooms led to a special garden space. DCMud spoke with Gardner about the process.

DCMud: Tell us about the original house.

Gardner: This project was one in which the client wanted to rebuild their 1,350 s.f. bungalow— in a state of advanced disrepair. It had a first floor plan that was fairly typical for bungalows, and it had an attic that had kind of been converted into small bedrooms which actually added about another 1,000 s.f. onto the home for a total of approximately 2,300 s.f. The owners wanted to recreate the sense of bungalow, but also to reconnect to its Asian roots.


DCMud: Interesting. How many people would know the genesis of the bungalow style?

Gardner: It actually has several lineages, and some go back—even indirectly— to Asian influences. This client wanted a bungalow that most people would recognize as such on their street, but as you move from street to garden, make a transition toward something more modern and Asian-inspired.

DCMud: How did you strategize the renovation?

 Gardner: We completely rebuilt the second floor, and moreover, created an 18 X 30-foot addition on the back. The second floor of the house is the size of the original footprint plus the size of the addition. We did that because of the way we designed the roof—the roof ridge was raised only seven feet—which extends out onto the addition. Height restrictions in Montgomery County are a big deal. Traditional farmhouses in Japan are called Minkas, and the roof form of this project is kind of like the roof form of a Minka.

The only elements we kept were the first floor exterior walls, and the rooms just behind those walls, but completely rebuilt the rest. There’s more new construction here than there is renovation. But when you’re inside, it’s very hard to tell what’s new or old until you get to that back portion, though there is a very smooth transition from street to garden so you’re almost not aware of what happened until you get there. The client’s priorities included interconnected spaces and a room that allowed them to feel like they are part of the garden. The home was finished at 4,000 s.f.  

DCMud: Besides the master suite, what do you find upstairs?

Gardner: There’s a second floor room that has a set of doors that exit onto a balcony, and there’s a spiral stair, so you can come into the house from the garden side and it could become a mother-in-law suite. The only thing missing up there is a kitchenette which can be added. The angle upstairs comes from tucking the rooms up into the roof form, as the roof form goes from its ridge just about down to the level of the first floor. Consequently you get spaces that get the actual roof for a ceiling rather than a flat ceiling. This is not only common for bungalows, but also for some vernacular traditional Asian homes.

DCMud: The exposed collar ties up there almost look like part of the Asian design.

Gardner: The collar ties keep the roof members from pushing out on the walls of the house. In most houses, the roof is entirely above the second floor and you don’t see it, but in this house…the structure of the roof is actually part of the room. We wanted the effect that exposing the collar ties would provide. Above them, the space goes all the way up to the ridge with a window at the top which brings east light into the room. Skylights above the collar ties also make for very interesting light. 

DCMud: Any sustainable elements?

Gardner: Much of the wood in the house is reclaimed barn wood, including the floor. The beams are engineered lumber wrapped in the reclaimed barn wood. The wall of west-facing glass is high-performing double-glazed with a high solar heat gain coefficient. Right outside is the veranda which provides shade for this exposure. We couldn’t change the angle of the house but we could manage the way light came in. The roof is a simulated shingle by EcoStar made from recycled tires.

DCMud: Speaking of sustainable, what sustains you, living and working in the District?

Gardner: I really like Rock Creek Park, and one reason is because of the way it carves its way through the city. You can be in the middle of Rock Creek Park and not know you’re almost in downtown D.C. I love its impact on the city and I love being in it. From a design and engineering standpoint, some of the bridges in the park are spectacular. Whenever I drive somewhere and can go through Rock Creek, I do: It’s a magical thing to be in the park and then pop up in the city.