Contemporary Tradition
a modern bungalo
While there is a great abundance of traditional housing stock around the city, our clients came to us because they were unable to find a bungalow style home that accommodated their modern lifestyle. So with the desire to fit into the existing neighborhood character of a Phinney Ridge side street, we set out to create a home with all the amenities of contemporary living with a slightly more casual and open floor plan and a greater overall square footage than was typically built in an early 20th century house. One of our biggest priorities was to maintain the scale and character of this building type rather than just create an overscaled copy of the historic type typical in this neighborhood, so we worked to distribute spaces amongst 3 floors with a partially daylit basement and the upper floor housing the master suite largely tucked into the roof volume. Although details throughout were designed to be characteristic of the period, interiors remained a little more open spatially and creating a strong connection the yard and patio to the south from the living spaces.
Contextually, this section of the neighborhood maintained a pattern of elevated finished grade in relation to the property lines with retaining walls and garages that enfront the street at the lot line. And while the older neighborhood prototypes were generally very compact single car garages, we needed to accommodate several modern day SUVs plus generous storage.