Greenwich House / Julian King Architect

Oct 2010

Uploaded by Nico Saieh — Filed under: Houses ,Selected , Connecticut, Greenwich, Julian King Architect, Stone, USA, Wood

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Architect: Julian King Architect
Location: Greenwich, Connecticut, USA
Project Team: Julian King, Christina Lyons, Sean Barry, Julie Boynton, Marc Levin
Structural Engineer: Alnour Consulting Engineering PC
Mechanical Engineer: AltieriSeborWiebor LLC, (Adam Trojanowski project engineer)
Lighting Consultant: Melanie Freundlich Lighting Design
Project Year: 2010
Photographs: Courtesy of Julian King Architect

first floor plan

second floor plan

The clients, their children grown, wanted to scale down their lives and build a smaller, three bedroom house, with a ground floor family room that could become the master bedroom in the future, should stairs prove too arduous. An important design directive was that the house “fit” among the traditional homes surrounding the site, built in the New England Shingle Style, as well as a place that spoke of family; that their grandchildren would have fun visiting.

The client’s desire for comforting images of home became the central question of the project: how to provide the familiar, while making something meaningful. The idea was to embrace the expected forms and materials of the surroundings that have come to represent domicile not in a nostalgic way, but as the prosaic basis for revealing images we find shelter from, and what really sustains us. To that end, the expected gable roof is abstracted into an archetypal image of home-a taught, pure, triangular volume-balanced precariously upon an imperfect single stone wall rising out of the bedrock. One has an intimate tactile relationship to this wall; sliding along it through the entry, cooking upon it, inhabiting it in the powder room, building a fire in it, stepping onto it to the second floor bathroom, where one ultimately bathes in it.

The material palette was kept simple: reclaimed wood, local stone, water, and light. Their individual characteristics and roles overlap each other, invoking the relationship between things that continually change-the seasons, the movement of the sun, wind rippling across water, or the graying of cedar shingles over time-and the things that remain, such as immaterial emotions and familial ties-more lasting at times than bedrock-and how these apparent opposite inhabit each other.

In the end, sunlight enlivens old stoic stone, patios reach out to catch the fallen leaves of an old tree, and the imagined becomes inseparable from the real, in that wonderful state of grace grandchilden live in.

: © Courtesy of Julian King Architect

: © Courtesy of Julian King Architect

: © Courtesy of Julian King Architect

: © Courtesy of Julian King Architect

: © Courtesy of Julian King Architect

: © Courtesy of Julian King Architect

: © Courtesy of Julian King Architect

: wooden model

: site plan

: first floor plan

: second floor plan

: truss

: stairs hall sketch

* Location to be used only as a reference. It could indicate city/country but not exact address.

Cite:
Saieh , Nico . "Greenwich House / Julian King Architect" 07 Oct 2010. ArchDaily. Accessed 26 May 2012. <http://www.archdaily.com/80634>

Comments (5)
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M. says:

I know it is a stupid comment to say, but this might be the most beautiful house I’ve ever seen!!

# October 7, 2010 at 18:24

ASphere says:

this is the one who get the first prize for Shinkenchiku Residential Competition2009

# October 8, 2010 at 04:02

Travis Ray Deane says:

Beautifully executed. Those crisp minimalist lines can be so hard to achieve. And a refreshing change from the sort of BS that Libeskind, Holl and Eisenman try to pretend is real architecture.

# October 8, 2010 at 18:32

R Goldschmidt says:

Hmmm, I really like this house, love to see that fine lines and material can change a lot a modest home. But I like even see that twisted form of Libeskind, Ghery, Zaha, all the starchitect who are blame today. So the history it is show as again that we are allways came back to the older idea’s and style.

# October 9, 2010 at 10:31

connecticut says:

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# October 29, 2011 at 15:24

2:08 PM Oct 7th

Henry A.Vásquez Soto

Greenwich House / Julian King Architect | ArchDaily http://t.co/4fXTtse via @archdaily

2:10 PM Oct 7th

Rizky Kurniady Lanoh

RT @ArchDaily: Greenwich House / Julian King Architect http://archdai.ly/bdXsx3 #architecture http://myloc.me/cS7lO

2:27 PM Oct 7th

Mark Gardner

Greenwich House / Julian King Architect | ArchDaily http://t.co/Bd7P47Z via @archdaily

2:35 PM Oct 7th

Architekt R V Scholz