By Catarina Ferreira, AIA

Architextual’s work is clearly not traditional in style. Having grown up in Europe, I’ve always understood that old homes can be given a new life through careful, thoughtful interventions. Lack of stylistic compatibility between old and new is not something I’ve ever believed to be real. European architecture is full of examples that prove otherwise. When cities and buildings have been around for centuries, change is seen as inevitable and embraced.

Practicing architecture in the US, especially in a city like Washington DC, I have come across many projects that attempt a more literal ‘stylistic compatibility.’ Tastes can differ. Style aside, for me what has always mattered is the quality of the space/project I generate, and how much it improves its occupants’ quality of life.

A lot of our projects are interventions in existing buildings, often homes, many of which are around 100 years old or older. In these projects, we focus first and foremost on solving functional problems. Let’s face it, the way people lived 100 years ago is not the way we live today. As the container of our lives, architecture, especially homes, needs to reflect how we live today to be enjoyable.

On a project completed a couple of years ago, we had the opportunity to reinvent a classic center hall colonial home, likely the most common house type in the DC metro area. Located on a very desirable site, facing Rock Creek Park, the cookie cutter home did little to engage with its site conditions. Like many spec homes built nowadays, spec homes built 100 years ago were no better… they were repeated throughout entire neighborhoods with little recognition of site conditions, no matter how beautiful. As architects, we know that addressing/responding to site conditions is one of the ways a mere home can become architecture instead of mere construction.

Early on, we identified several problems/missed opportunities:

Compartmentalized spaces limited access to natural light and views.
Kitchen was small and disconnected from other living spaces.
There was no mudroom, entry from driveway led directly into kitchen.
Sunroom space was oddly shaped and unusable, disconnected from other spaces, and blocked views of park from living room.
There was only one bedroom on entire second floor.
There was no laundry room on bedroom level.

Our interventions needed to be both precise and effective. The pivotal decision in this case was moving the kitchen to the prior dining room area, something that was not immediately obvious would be the right move to our clients, as it required the dining room to be moved to the unappealing sunroom. In order to improve relationships between spaces several interior walls had to be removed, as well as a portion of the exterior wall separating the sunroom from the living room.

The rest of the layout fell into place easily. We created a mudroom where the kitchen had been previously located, added a second door to the powder room to make it accessible from both the mudroom and entry hall sides, enlarged/added windows in the new kitchen and living room areas, added a new pocket door connecting the living room and library spaces. Now we had a layout we could ‘roller skate around in,’ as is often my goal. There was improved functionality, flow, access to light and views. From the front door, we now had an unobstructed path to the windows facing the park on the opposite side of the house.

On the second floor, what had been an enormous, labyrinth-like primary suite became a primary suite with private bath and dressing room, two additional bedrooms, two bathrooms, and a laundry closet.

On both levels, the house’s history is still legible. Some of the original elements were maintained and refurbished, altered slightly without erasing their character completely: the main stair and balustrade, the fireplace, some of the original decorative trims.

The end result has a slight Scandinavian/Japandi flair, with a composed yet informal, inviting quality throughout. The new dining room is everyone’s favorite space in the house.

by Catarina Ferreira, AIA

What exactly does it mean for a building to be ‘contextual?’ In mainstream culture, particularly American culture, it’s often called ‘fitting in,’ or being ‘appropriate,’ replicating nearby architectural styles, regardless of era.

As a European-born and raised individual, even before attending architecture school, I already had an intuitive understanding of it which had nothing to do with style. While in architecture school at Syracuse University, that understanding was reinforced early on by the teachings of Werner Seligman, one of the legendary Texas Rangers, who revolutionized architectural education in the US, leaving their mark at universities like The University of Texas, Austin, Cornell University, Syracuse University, etc. Werner was a modernism to the core and his teachings resonated with me. I was fortunate to have been taken under Werner’s wing, a privilege not granted to many. He was as famous for making students cry as for his teachings.

Given my background and Werner’s modernist influence, ‘contextual’ to me has always meant, above all else, site-specific. It has never meant invisible, subservient to older buildings/styles, cowardly. After all, the present day is also part of history and history would be illegible if every building looked like a Roman temple, or, if we go back further, a cave. To me, it really is that simple.

On a recent residential project located in Washington DC’s Colonial Village, I had the opportunity to explore what it means to be contextual without creating a stylistic caricature of a neighborhood. Initially, the site conditions took precedence over everything else. The newly created, undeveloped lot was so steep, there were those who called it unbuildable. Providing vehicular access, navigating the topography, arranging the massing and interior spaces in a way that worked from all angles were challenging tasks.

On an adjacent property, a Tudor-style mansion stood proudly overlooking the hillside and Rock Creek Park to the West. Colonial Village is predominantly Tudor-style. Given its larger than the typical house scale, the mansion provided guidance in terms of massing. It is composed of various volumes, layered front to back and from the center to the edges, it is site-specific, as sculptural as it is traditional and complex enough to be architectural interesting.

As the result of the complex site conditions, our project became an accumulation of volumes from the onset. Like the Tudor mansion, it is clearly visible from various angles and must respond to varying topographic conditions, orientation, views, and access constraints. Not entirely by coincidence, its massing echoes that of the mansion to a certain extent. The living room volume at the front of our house has a similar relationship to the house’s main volume as the faceted volume on the side of the mansion. Both have as much glazing as possible and provide expansive views of their surroundings.

One might say that both houses, despite having radically different architectural styles, respond to their site conditions in similar ways, making them relate to each other. By focusing on what architecture does, instead of what it looks like, my goal was to achieve contextual compatibility without making it look forced, contrived, uninspiring.

As is often the case in our projects, the traditional context is framed, objectified, even put on display through strategic window placement. The end result is a house that cannot be removed from its site, or its context, as it would simply not work anywhere else.