This modern green home offers both a vacation destination on Cape Cod near local family members and an opportunity for rental income. FAMILY ROOTS. A West Coast couple living in the San Francisco Bay Area sought a permanent East Coast vacation home near family members living on Cape Cod. As academic professionals focused on sustainability, they sought a green, energy efficient home that was well-aligned with their values. With no green homes available for sale on Cape Cod, they decided to purchase land near their family and build their own. SLOPED SITE. Comprised of a 3/4 acre lot nestled in the pines, the steeply sloping terrain called for a plan that embraced and took advantage of the slope. Of equal priority was optimizing solar exposure, preserving privacy from abutters, and creating outdoor living space. The design accomplished these goals with a simple, rectilinear form, offering living space on the both entry and lower/basement levels. The stepped foundation allows for a walk-out basement level with light-filled living space on the down-hill side of the home. The traditional basement on the eastern, up-hill side houses mechanical equipment and a home gym. The house welcomes natural light throughout, captures views of the forest, and delivers entertainment space that connects indoor living space to outdoor deck and dining patio. MODERN VISION. The clean building form and uncomplicated finishes pay homage to the modern architectural legacy on the outer Cape. Durable and economical fiber cement panels, fixed with aluminum channels, clad the primary form. Cedar clapboards provide a visual accent at the south-facing living room, which extends a single roof plane to cover the entry porch. SMART USE OF SPACE. On the entry level, the “L”-shaped living, dining, and kitchen space connects to the exterior living, dining, and grilling spaces to effectively double the home’s summertime entertainment area. Placed at the western end of the entry level (where it can retain privacy but still claim expansive downhill views) is the master suite with a built-in study. The lower level has two guest bedrooms, a second full bathroom, and laundry. The flexibility of the space—crucial in a house with a modest footprint—emerges in one of the guest bedrooms, which doubles as home office by opening the barn-style double doors to connect it to the bright, airy open stair leading up to the entry level. Thoughtful design, generous ceiling heights and large windows transform the modest 1,100 sf* footprint into a well-lit, spacious home. *(total finished space is 1800 sf) RENTAL INCOME. The property works for its owners by netting rental income when the owners are home in San Francisco. The house especially caters to vacationers bound for nearby Mayo Beach and includes an outdoor shower adjacent to the lower level entry door. In contrast to the bare bones cottages that are typically available on the Cape, this home offers prospective tenants a modern aesthetic, paired with luxurious and green features. Durable finishes inside and out will ensure longevity with the heavier use that comes with a rental property. COMFORT YEAR-ROUND. The home is super-insulated and air-tight, with mechanical ventilation to provide continuous fresh air from the outside. High performance triple-paned windows complement the building enclosure and maximize passive solar gain while ensuring a warm, draft-free winter, even when sitting close to the glass. A properly sized air source heat pump offers efficient heating & cooling, and includes a carefully designed the duct distribution system to provide even comfort throughout the house. The super-insulated envelope allows us to significantly reduce the equipment capacity, duct size, and airflow quantities, while maintaining unparalleled thermal comfort. ENERGY EFFICIENT. The building’s shell and mechanical systems play instrumental roles in the home’s exceptional performance. The building enclosure reduces the most significant energy glutton: heating. Continuous super-insulation, thorough air sealing, triple-pane windows, and passive solar gain work together to yield a miniscule heating load. All active energy consumers are extremely efficient: an air source heat pump for heating and cooling, a heat pump hot water heater, LED lighting, energy recovery ventilation (ERV), and high efficiency appliances. The result is a home that uses 70% less energy than a similar new home built to code requirements. OVERALL. The home embodies the owners’ goals and values while comprehensively enabling thermal comfort, energy efficiency, a vacation respite, and supplementary income. PROJECT TEAM ZeroEnergy Design - Architect & Mechanical Designer A.F. Hultin & Co. - Contractor Pamet Valley Landscape Design - Landscape & Masonry Lisa Finch - Original Artwork European Architectural Supply - Windows Eric Roth Photography - Photography

Parade of Homes Gold Winner This 7,500 modern farmhouse style home was designed for a busy family with young children. The family lives over three floors including home theater, gym, playroom, and a hallway with individual desk for each child. From the farmhouse front, the house transitions to a contemporary oasis with large modern windows, a covered patio, and room for a pool.

modern backyard with tudor home in Portland Oregon
This is an example of a traditional two-storey exterior in Portland.

The client’s request was quite common - a typical 2800 sf builder home with 3 bedrooms, 2 baths, living space, and den. However, their desire was for this to be “anything but common.” The result is an innovative update on the production home for the modern era, and serves as a direct counterpoint to the neighborhood and its more conventional suburban housing stock, which focus views to the backyard and seeks to nullify the unique qualities and challenges of topography and the natural environment. The Terraced House cautiously steps down the site’s steep topography, resulting in a more nuanced approach to site development than cutting and filling that is so common in the builder homes of the area. The compact house opens up in very focused views that capture the natural wooded setting, while masking the sounds and views of the directly adjacent roadway. The main living spaces face this major roadway, effectively flipping the typical orientation of a suburban home, and the main entrance pulls visitors up to the second floor and halfway through the site, providing a sense of procession and privacy absent in the typical suburban home. Clad in a custom rain screen that reflects the wood of the surrounding landscape - while providing a glimpse into the interior tones that are used. The stepping “wood boxes” rest on a series of concrete walls that organize the site, retain the earth, and - in conjunction with the wood veneer panels - provide a subtle organic texture to the composition. The interior spaces wrap around an interior knuckle that houses public zones and vertical circulation - allowing more private spaces to exist at the edges of the building. The windows get larger and more frequent as they ascend the building, culminating in the upstairs bedrooms that occupy the site like a tree house - giving views in all directions. The Terraced House imports urban qualities to the suburban neighborhood and seeks to elevate the typical approach to production home construction, while being more in tune with modern family living patterns. Overview: Elm Grove Size: 2,800 sf, 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms Completion Date: September 2014 Services: Architecture, Landscape Architecture Interior Consultants: Amy Carman Design

Originally built in the 1940’s as an austere three-bedroom partial center-hall neo-colonial with attached garage, this house has assumed an entirely new identity. The transformation to an asymmetrical dormered cottage responded to the architectural character of the surrounding City of Falls Church neighborhood. The family had lived in this house for seven years, but recognized that the plan of the house, with its discreet box-like rooms, was at odds with their desired life-style. The circulation for the house included each room, without a distinct circulation system. The architect was asked to expand the living space on both floors, and create a house that unified family activities. A family room and breakfast room were added to the rear of the first floor, and the existing spaces reconfigured to create an openness and connection among the rooms. An existing garage was integrated into the house volume, becoming the kitchen, powder room and mudroom. Front and back porches were added, allowing an overlap of family life inside the house and outside in the yard. Rather than simply enlarge the rectangular footprint of the house, the architect sought to break down the massing with perpendicular gable roofs and dormers to alleviate the roof line. The Craftsman style provided texture to the fenestration. The broad roof overhangs provided sun screening and rain protection. The challenge of unifying the massing led to the development of the breakfast room. Conceived as a modern element, the one-story massing of the breakfast room with roof terrace above twists the volume 45% to the mass of the main house. Materials and detailing express the distinction. While the main house is clad in the original brick and new horizontal siding with trim and details appropriate to its cottage vocabulary, the breakfast room exterior is clad in vertical wide-board tongue-and-groove siding to minimize the texture. The steel hand railing on the roof terrace above accentuates the clean lines of this special element. Hoachlander Davis Photography

LG House (Edmonton Design :: thirdstone inc. [^] Photography :: Merle Prosofsky
Modern exterior in Edmonton with wood siding.

Project :: SD House Design by :: www.thirdstone.ca Photography: merle prosofsky
This is an example of a modern exterior in Edmonton with wood siding.

This new modern house is located in a meadow in Lenox MA. The house is designed as a series of linked pavilions to connect the house to the nature and to provide the maximum daylight in each room. The center focus of the home is the largest pavilion containing the living/dining/kitchen, with the guest pavilion to the south and the master bedroom and screen porch pavilions to the west. While the roof line appears flat from the exterior, the roofs of each pavilion have a pronounced slope inward and to the north, a sort of funnel shape. This design allows rain water to channel via a scupper to cisterns located on the north side of the house. Steel beams, Douglas fir rafters and purlins are exposed in the living/dining/kitchen pavilion. Photo by: Nat Rea Photography

Mid-Century Remodel on Tabor Hill This sensitively sited house was designed by Robert Coolidge, a renowned architect and grandson of President Calvin Coolidge. The house features a symmetrical gable roof and beautiful floor to ceiling glass facing due south, smartly oriented for passive solar heating. Situated on a steep lot, the house is primarily a single story that steps down to a family room. This lower level opens to a New England exterior. Our goals for this project were to maintain the integrity of the original design while creating more modern spaces. Our design team worked to envision what Coolidge himself might have designed if he'd had access to modern materials and fixtures. With the aim of creating a signature space that ties together the living, dining, and kitchen areas, we designed a variation on the 1950's "floating kitchen." In this inviting assembly, the kitchen is located away from exterior walls, which allows views from the floor-to-ceiling glass to remain uninterrupted by cabinetry. We updated rooms throughout the house; installing modern features that pay homage to the fine, sleek lines of the original design. Finally, we opened the family room to a terrace featuring a fire pit. Since a hallmark of our design is the diminishment of the hard line between interior and exterior, we were especially pleased for the opportunity to update this classic work.

Photos by Francis and Francis Photography The Anderson Residence is ‘practically’ a new home in one of Las Vegas midcentury modern neighborhoods McNeil. The house is the current home of Ian Anderson the local Herman Miller dealer and Shanna Anderson of Leeland furniture family. When Ian first introduced CSPA studio to the project it was burned down house. Turns out that the house is a 1960 midcentury modern sister of two homes that was destroyed by arson in a dispute between landlord and tenant. Once inside the burned walls it was quite clear what a wonderful house it once was. Great care was taken to try and restore the house to a similar splendor. The reality is the remodel didn’t involve much of the original house, by the time the fire damage was remediated there wasn’t much left. The renovation includes an additional 1000 SF of office, guest bedroom, laundry, mudroom, guest toilet outdoor shower and a garage. The roof line was raised in order to accommodate a forced air mechanical system, but care was taken to keep the lines long and low (appearing) to match the midcentury modern style. The House is an H-shape. Typically houses of this time period would have small rooms with long narrow hallways. However in this case with the walls burned out one can see from one side of the house to other creating a huge feeling space. It was decided to totally open the East side of the house and make the kitchen which gently spills into the living room and wood burning fireplace the public side. New windows and a huge 16’ sliding door were added all the way around the courtyard so that one can see out and across into the private side. On the west side of the house the long thin hallway is opened up by the windows to the courtyard and the long wall offers an opportunity for a gallery style art display. The long hallway opens to two bedrooms, shared bathroom and master bedroom. The end of the hallway opens to a casual living room and the swimming pool area. The house has no formal dining room but a 15’ custom crafted table by Ian’s sculptor father that is an extension of the kitchen island. The H-shape creates two covered areas, one is the front entry courtyard, fenced in by a Brazilian walnut enclosure and crowned by a steel art installation by Ian’s father. The rear covered courtyard is a breezy spot for chilling out on a hot desert day. The pool was re-finished and a shallow soaking deck added. A new barbeque and covered patio added. Some of the large plant material was salvaged and nursed back to health and a complete new desert landscape was re-installed to bring the exterior to life.

Picture Perfect House
Inspiration for a large country two-storey white house exterior in Chicago with wood siding and a shingle roof.

Modern - Contemporary Interior Designs By J Design Group in Miami, Florida. Aventura Magazine selected one of our contemporary interior design projects and they said: Shortly after Jennifer Corredor’s interior design clients bought a four-bedroom, three bath home last year, the couple suffered through a period of buyer’s remorse. While they loved the Bay Harbor Islands location and the 4,000-square-foot, one-story home’s potential for beauty and ample entertaining space, they felt the living and dining areas were too restricted and looked very small. They feared they had bought the wrong house. “My clients thought the brown wall separating these spaces from the kitchen created a somber mood and darkness, and they were unhappy after they had bought the house,” says Corredor of the J. Design Group in Coral Gables. “So we decided to renovate and tear down the wall to make a galley kitchen.” Mathy Garcia Chesnick, a sales director with Cervera Real Estate, and husband Andrew Chesnick, an executive for the new Porsche Design Tower residential project in Sunny Isles, liked the idea of incorporating the kitchen area into the living and dining spaces. Since they have two young children, the couple felt those areas were too narrow for easy, open living. At first, Corredor was afraid a structural beam could get in the way and impede the restoration process. But after doing research, she learned that problem did not exist, and there was nothing to hinder the project from moving forward. So she collapsed the wall to create one large kitchen, living and dining space. Then she changed the flooring, using 36x36-inch light slabs of gold Bianco marble, replacing the wood that had been there before. This process also enlarged the look of the space, giving it lightness, brightness and zoom. “By eliminating the wall and adding the marble we amplified the new and expanded public area,” says Corredor, who is known for optimizing space in creative ways. “And I used sheer white window treatments which further opened things up creating an airy, balmy space. The transformation is astonishing! It looks like a different place.” Part of that transformation included stripping the “awful” brown kitchen cabinets and replacing them with clean-lined, white ones from Italy. She also added a functional island and mint chocolate granite countertops. At one end of the kitchen space, Corredor designed dark wood shelving where Mathy displays her collection of cookbooks. “Mathy cooks a great deal, and they entertain on a regular basis,” says Corredor. “The island we created is where she likes to serve the kids breakfast and have family members gather. And when they have a dinner party, everyone can mill in and out of the kitchen-galley, dining and living areas while able to see everything going on around them. It looks and functions so much better.” Corredor extended the Bianco marble flooring to other open areas of the house, nearly everywhere except for the bedrooms. She also changed the powder room, which is annexed to the kitchen. She applied white linear glass on the walls and added a new white square sink by Hastings. Clean and fresh, the room is reminiscent of a little jewel box. I n the living room, Corredor designed a showpiece wall unit of exotic cherry wood with an aqua center to bring back some warmth that modernizing naturally strips away. The designer also changed the room’s lighting, introducing a new system that eschews a switch. Instead, it works by remote and also dims to create various moods for different social engagements. “The lighting is wonderful and enhances everything else we have done in these open spaces,” says Corredor. T he dining room overlooks the pool and yard, with large, floorto- ceiling window brings the outdoors inside. A chandelier above the dining table is another expression of openness, like the lens of a person’s eyeglasses. “We wanted this unusual piece because its sort of translucence takes you outside without ever moving from the room,” explains Corredor. “The family members love seeing the yard and pool from the living and dining space. It’s also great for entertaining friends and business associates. They can get a real feel for the subtropical elegance of Miami.” N earby, the front door was originally brown so she repainted it a sleek lacquered white. This bright consistency helps maintain a constant eye flow from one section of the open areas to another. Everything is visible in the new extended space and creates a bright and inviting atmosphere. “It was important to modernize and update the house without totally changing the character,” says Corredor. “We organized everything well and it turned out beautifully, just as we envisioned it.” While nothing on the home’s exterior was changed, Corredor worked her magic in the master bedroom by adding panels with a wavelike motif to again bring elements of the outside in. The room is austere and clean lined, elegant, peaceful and not cluttered with unnecessary furnishings. In the master bath, Corredor removed the existing cabinets and made another large cherry wood cabinet, this time with double sinks for husband and wife. She also added frosted green glass to give a spa-like aura to the spacious room. T hroughout the house are splashy canvases from Mathy’s personal art collection. She likes to add color to the decor through the art while the backdrops remain a soothing white. The end result is a divine, refined interior, light, bright and open. “The owners are thrilled, and we were able to complete the renovation in a few months,” says Corredor. “Everything turned out how it should be.” J Design Group Call us. 305-444-4611 Miami modern, Contemporary Interior Designers, Modern Interior Designers, Coco Plum Interior Designers, Sunny Isles Interior Designers, Pinecrest Interior Designers, J Design Group interiors, South Florida designers, Best Miami Designers, Miami interiors, Miami décor, Miami Beach Designers, Best Miami Interior Designers, Miami Beach Interiors, Luxurious Design in Miami, Top designers, Deco Miami, Luxury interiors, Miami Beach Luxury Interiors, Miami Interior Design, Miami Interior Design Firms, Beach front, Top Interior Designers, top décor, Top Miami Decorators, Miami luxury condos, modern interiors, Modern, Pent house design, white interiors, Top Miami Interior Decorators, Top Miami Interior Designers, Modern Designers in Miami, J Design Group Call us. 305-444-4611 www.JDesignGroup.com

The Port Ludlow Residence is a compact, 2400 SF modern house located on a wooded waterfront property at the north end of the Hood Canal, a long, fjord-like arm of western Puget Sound. The house creates a simple glazed living space that opens up to become a front porch to the beautiful Hood Canal. The east-facing house is sited along a high bank, with a wonderful view of the water. The main living volume is completely glazed, with 12-ft. high glass walls facing the view and large, 8-ft.x8-ft. sliding glass doors that open to a slightly raised wood deck, creating a seamless indoor-outdoor space. During the warm summer months, the living area feels like a large, open porch. Anchoring the north end of the living space is a two-story building volume containing several bedrooms and separate his/her office spaces. The interior finishes are simple and elegant, with IPE wood flooring, zebrawood cabinet doors with mahogany end panels, quartz and limestone countertops, and Douglas Fir trim and doors. Exterior materials are completely maintenance-free: metal siding and aluminum windows and doors. The metal siding has an alternating pattern using two different siding profiles. The house has a number of sustainable or “green” building features, including 2x8 construction (40% greater insulation value); generous glass areas to provide natural lighting and ventilation; large overhangs for sun and rain protection; metal siding (recycled steel) for maximum durability, and a heat pump mechanical system for maximum energy efficiency. Sustainable interior finish materials include wood cabinets, linoleum floors, low-VOC paints, and natural wool carpet.

This historic home and coach house in a landmark district on Astor Street was built in the late 1800’s. Originally designed as an 11,000sf single family residence, the home was divided into nine apartments in the 1960’s and had fallen into disrepair. The new owners purchased the property with a vision to convert the building back to single family residence for their young family. The design concept was to restore the limestone exterior to its original state and reconstruct the interior into a home with an open floor plan and modern amenities for entertaining and family living, incorporating vintage details from the original property whenever possible. Program requirements included five bedrooms, all new bathrooms, contemporary kitchen, salon, library, billiards room with bar, home office, cinema, playroom, garage with stacking car lifts, and outdoor gardens with all new landscaping. The home is unified by a grand staircase which is flooded with natural light from a glass laylight roof. The first level includes a formal entry with rich wood and marble finishes, a walnut-paneled billiards room with custom bar, a play room, and a separate family entry with mudroom. A formal living and dining room with adjoining intimate salon are located on the second level; an addition at the rear of the home includes a custom deGiulio kitchen and family room. The third level master suite includes a marble bathroom, dressing room, library, and office. The fourth level includes the family bedrooms and a guest suite with a terrace and views of Lake Michigan. The lower level houses a custom cinema. Sustainable elements are seamlessly integrated throughout and include renewable materials, high-efficiency mechanicals and thermal envelope, restored original mahogany windows with new high-performance low-E glass, and a green roof.

Karuna Passive House designed by Holst Architecture and built by Hammer & Hand. This high performance home meets the world's most demanding green building certifications. Photo by Jeremy Bittermann.

Klopf Architecture and Outer space Landscape Architects designed a new warm, modern, open, indoor-outdoor home in Los Altos, California. Inspired by mid-century modern homes but looking for something completely new and custom, the owners, a couple with two children, bought an older ranch style home with the intention of replacing it. Created on a grid, the house is designed to be at rest with differentiated spaces for activities; living, playing, cooking, dining and a piano space. The low-sloping gable roof over the great room brings a grand feeling to the space. The clerestory windows at the high sloping roof make the grand space light and airy. Upon entering the house, an open atrium entry in the middle of the house provides light and nature to the great room. The Heath tile wall at the back of the atrium blocks direct view of the rear yard from the entry door for privacy. The bedrooms, bathrooms, play room and the sitting room are under flat wing-like roofs that balance on either side of the low sloping gable roof of the main space. Large sliding glass panels and pocketing glass doors foster openness to the front and back yards. In the front there is a fenced-in play space connected to the play room, creating an indoor-outdoor play space that could change in use over the years. The play room can also be closed off from the great room with a large pocketing door. In the rear, everything opens up to a deck overlooking a pool where the family can come together outdoors. Wood siding travels from exterior to interior, accentuating the indoor-outdoor nature of the house. Where the exterior siding doesn’t come inside, a palette of white oak floors, white walls, walnut cabinetry, and dark window frames ties all the spaces together to create a uniform feeling and flow throughout the house. The custom cabinetry matches the minimal joinery of the rest of the house, a trim-less, minimal appearance. Wood siding was mitered in the corners, including where siding meets the interior drywall. Wall materials were held up off the floor with a minimal reveal. This tight detailing gives a sense of cleanliness to the house. The garage door of the house is completely flush and of the same material as the garage wall, de-emphasizing the garage door and making the street presentation of the house kinder to the neighborhood. The house is akin to a custom, modern-day Eichler home in many ways. Inspired by mid-century modern homes with today’s materials, approaches, standards, and technologies. The goals were to create an indoor-outdoor home that was energy-efficient, light and flexible for young children to grow. This 3,000 square foot, 3 bedroom, 2.5 bathroom new house is located in Los Altos in the heart of the Silicon Valley. Klopf Architecture Project Team: John Klopf, AIA, and Chuang-Ming Liu 
Landscape Architect: Outer space Landscape Architects 
Structural Engineer: ZFA Structural Engineers 
Staging: Da Lusso Design 
Photography ©2018 Mariko Reed 
Location: Los Altos, CA
 Year completed: 2017

Modern - Contemporary Interior Designs By J Design Group in Miami, Florida. Aventura Magazine selected one of our contemporary interior design projects and they said: Shortly after Jennifer Corredor’s interior design clients bought a four-bedroom, three bath home last year, the couple suffered through a period of buyer’s remorse. While they loved the Bay Harbor Islands location and the 4,000-square-foot, one-story home’s potential for beauty and ample entertaining space, they felt the living and dining areas were too restricted and looked very small. They feared they had bought the wrong house. “My clients thought the brown wall separating these spaces from the kitchen created a somber mood and darkness, and they were unhappy after they had bought the house,” says Corredor of the J. Design Group in Coral Gables. “So we decided to renovate and tear down the wall to make a galley kitchen.” Mathy Garcia Chesnick, a sales director with Cervera Real Estate, and husband Andrew Chesnick, an executive for the new Porsche Design Tower residential project in Sunny Isles, liked the idea of incorporating the kitchen area into the living and dining spaces. Since they have two young children, the couple felt those areas were too narrow for easy, open living. At first, Corredor was afraid a structural beam could get in the way and impede the restoration process. But after doing research, she learned that problem did not exist, and there was nothing to hinder the project from moving forward. So she collapsed the wall to create one large kitchen, living and dining space. Then she changed the flooring, using 36x36-inch light slabs of gold Bianco marble, replacing the wood that had been there before. This process also enlarged the look of the space, giving it lightness, brightness and zoom. “By eliminating the wall and adding the marble we amplified the new and expanded public area,” says Corredor, who is known for optimizing space in creative ways. “And I used sheer white window treatments which further opened things up creating an airy, balmy space. The transformation is astonishing! It looks like a different place.” Part of that transformation included stripping the “awful” brown kitchen cabinets and replacing them with clean-lined, white ones from Italy. She also added a functional island and mint chocolate granite countertops. At one end of the kitchen space, Corredor designed dark wood shelving where Mathy displays her collection of cookbooks. “Mathy cooks a great deal, and they entertain on a regular basis,” says Corredor. “The island we created is where she likes to serve the kids breakfast and have family members gather. And when they have a dinner party, everyone can mill in and out of the kitchen-galley, dining and living areas while able to see everything going on around them. It looks and functions so much better.” Corredor extended the Bianco marble flooring to other open areas of the house, nearly everywhere except for the bedrooms. She also changed the powder room, which is annexed to the kitchen. She applied white linear glass on the walls and added a new white square sink by Hastings. Clean and fresh, the room is reminiscent of a little jewel box. I n the living room, Corredor designed a showpiece wall unit of exotic cherry wood with an aqua center to bring back some warmth that modernizing naturally strips away. The designer also changed the room’s lighting, introducing a new system that eschews a switch. Instead, it works by remote and also dims to create various moods for different social engagements. “The lighting is wonderful and enhances everything else we have done in these open spaces,” says Corredor. T he dining room overlooks the pool and yard, with large, floorto- ceiling window brings the outdoors inside. A chandelier above the dining table is another expression of openness, like the lens of a person’s eyeglasses. “We wanted this unusual piece because its sort of translucence takes you outside without ever moving from the room,” explains Corredor. “The family members love seeing the yard and pool from the living and dining space. It’s also great for entertaining friends and business associates. They can get a real feel for the subtropical elegance of Miami.” N earby, the front door was originally brown so she repainted it a sleek lacquered white. This bright consistency helps maintain a constant eye flow from one section of the open areas to another. Everything is visible in the new extended space and creates a bright and inviting atmosphere. “It was important to modernize and update the house without totally changing the character,” says Corredor. “We organized everything well and it turned out beautifully, just as we envisioned it.” While nothing on the home’s exterior was changed, Corredor worked her magic in the master bedroom by adding panels with a wavelike motif to again bring elements of the outside in. The room is austere and clean lined, elegant, peaceful and not cluttered with unnecessary furnishings. In the master bath, Corredor removed the existing cabinets and made another large cherry wood cabinet, this time with double sinks for husband and wife. She also added frosted green glass to give a spa-like aura to the spacious room. T hroughout the house are splashy canvases from Mathy’s personal art collection. She likes to add color to the decor through the art while the backdrops remain a soothing white. The end result is a divine, refined interior, light, bright and open. “The owners are thrilled, and we were able to complete the renovation in a few months,” says Corredor. “Everything turned out how it should be.” J Design Group Call us. 305-444-4611 Miami modern, Contemporary Interior Designers, Modern Interior Designers, Coco Plum Interior Designers, Sunny Isles Interior Designers, Pinecrest Interior Designers, J Design Group interiors, South Florida designers, Best Miami Designers, Miami interiors, Miami décor, Miami Beach Designers, Best Miami Interior Designers, Miami Beach Interiors, Luxurious Design in Miami, Top designers, Deco Miami, Luxury interiors, Miami Beach Luxury Interiors, Miami Interior Design, Miami Interior Design Firms, Beach front, Top Interior Designers, top décor, Top Miami Decorators, Miami luxury condos, modern interiors, Modern, Pent house design, white interiors, Top Miami Interior Decorators, Top Miami Interior Designers, Modern Designers in Miami, J Design Group Call us. 305-444-4611 www.JDesignGroup.com

This residence was a complete gut renovation of a 4-story row house in Park Slope, and included a new rear extension and penthouse addition. The owners wished to create a warm, family home using a modern language that would act as a clean canvas to feature rich textiles and items from their world travels. As with most Brooklyn row houses, the existing house suffered from a lack of natural light and connection to exterior spaces, an issue that Principal Brendan Coburn is acutely aware of from his experience re-imagining historic structures in the New York area. The resulting architecture is designed around moments featuring natural light and views to the exterior, of both the private garden and the sky, throughout the house, and a stripped-down language of detailing and finishes allows for the concept of the modern-natural to shine. Upon entering the home, the kitchen and dining space draw you in with views beyond through the large glazed opening at the rear of the house. An extension was built to allow for a large sunken living room that provides a family gathering space connected to the kitchen and dining room, but remains distinctly separate, with a strong visual connection to the rear garden. The open sculptural stair tower was designed to function like that of a traditional row house stair, but with a smaller footprint. By extending it up past the original roof level into the new penthouse, the stair becomes an atmospheric shaft for the spaces surrounding the core. All types of weather – sunshine, rain, lightning, can be sensed throughout the home through this unifying vertical environment. The stair space also strives to foster family communication, making open living spaces visible between floors. At the upper-most level, a free-form bench sits suspended over the stair, just by the new roof deck, which provides at-ease entertaining. Oak was used throughout the home as a unifying material element. As one travels upwards within the house, the oak finishes are bleached to further degrees as a nod to how light enters the home. The owners worked with CWB to add their own personality to the project. The meter of a white oak and blackened steel stair screen was designed by the family to read “I love you” in Morse Code, and tile was selected throughout to reference places that hold special significance to the family. To support the owners’ comfort, the architectural design engages passive house technologies to reduce energy use, while increasing air quality within the home – a strategy which aims to respect the environment while providing a refuge from the harsh elements of urban living. This project was published by Wendy Goodman as her Space of the Week, part of New York Magazine’s Design Hunting on The Cut. Photography by Kevin Kunstadt

Tranquility on a warm summer evening. Photography: Phillip Mueller Photography Modern Cottage - House plan may be purchased at http://simplyeleganthomedesigns.com/deephaven_modern_unique_cottage_home_plan.html