An adventurous pair of houses with an interesting dynamic. The clients are brothers, both avid fans of New England industrial architecture, the grittier the better, who asked us to design two houses for their young families on two separate sites. As we worked with each of them, it became apparent that their ideas of what it meant to transform industrial into domestic were polar opposites, giving us an opportunity to analyze two directions in what might constitute an “industrial” architectural style. Basically, Brother M wanted restraint on the outside, chaos on the inside, while Brother S looked for chaos on the outside, restraint on the inside.

For Berkshire House VII, Brother S wanted a narrative exterior recalling old mill buildings developed over many decades in a historic continuum. Both brothers loved corrugated steel, which we ordered in short lengths, so the seams would show and contribute to the overall gritty feeling. This project includes clapboard, brick, and concrete block, one material for each of the four buildings of the assemblage. In this house, the interior is calm, even austere, and the overall mood is relaxed and unpretentious, like the client (though he could not resist a pair of bridges).