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Partner-in-Charge: David Sherman
Photographer: Jock Pottle
Design and Construction Documents: 1993
The existing building is quite small at 20? by 20? in plan, for two floors. A German-American secret society used the structure as a fencing club called Hudsonia for most of the 20th century; the new owner intends to retain the faux-medieval qualities of the ground floor drinking hall, while converting the upper level to the first of two new living floors for himself. The historical features of the club inspired a wood and tooled-metal palette for the addition; this is consistent with the immediate context in an alley of broken-down wood frame service structures side-by-side with small industrial buildings. The new treatments create a thin facade layer behind the existing one, emerging via the roof plane into a virtual new house. In the rear, the close quarters of the adjacent buildings are used to exaggerate the verticality of a new stair ?tower? and overlook. This is also layered with trellis and open clapboard to protect the privacy of the new occupant, and diffuse the inward views of the neighbors. A palette limited by cost but not by variety includes asphalt shingles, sheet copper, and stucco. These materials here lead to an extremely economical solution which dramatically alters the size, use, and look of the house, making it an exciting and unique architecture behind a stealthy, contextual facade which gives few hints as to the nature of the house behind. Adolf Loos? Tristan Tsara House in Paris was a point of departure.
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