Located in the Houston Heights, the Waverly Residence is a modern home on an established street of two story homes boasting front porch typologies. The family’s desire for privacy resulted in a porch that rotates to internalize most of its function while still addressing the street. For this active family, yard activity and it’s visibility from within the home emerged as a priority for approaching the building’s relationship to the lot. Justifying the building mass to the Northern half of the site reinforces the scale of the design to the surrounding buildings and creates a large southern yard dedicated to play and brisket (is a Texas house a house without a barbeque?). The ground floor is clad in metal panel and a wood rainscreen that peels away from the structure to become both a fence and an entry threshold, blending the registration between the yard's privacy enclosure and the building skin. Variable width fiber-cement siding clads the second floor as a nod to the neighborhood vernacular. The pool and outdoor kitchen sit at the center of the yard, forming an island that divides the open play from private vehicular access at the alley. Photo by Benjamin Hill Photography

Inspired by local fishing shacks and wharf buildings dotting the coast of Maine, this retreat interweaves large glazed openings with restrained and simple taut-skinned New England shingled cottages. The cottages are small outbuildings housing single functions - essentially sleeping and living. They're knit into the site via a series of grade level decks, small water features and natural plantings. Eric Reinholdt - Project Architect/Lead Designer with Elliott + Elliott Architecture Photo: Eric Reinholdt

Carefully orientated and sited on the edge of small plateau this house looks out across the rolling countryside of North Canterbury. The 3-bedroom rural family home is an exemplar of simplicity done with care and precision. Tucked in alongside a private limestone quarry with cows grazing in the distance the choice of materials are intuitively natural and implemented with bare authenticity. Oiled random width cedar weatherboards are contemporary and rustic, the polished concrete floors with exposed aggregate tie in wonderfully to the adjacent limestone cliffs, and the clean folded wall to roof, envelopes the building from the sheltered south to the amazing views to the north. Designed to portray purity of form the outer metal surface provides enclosure and shelter from the elements, while its inner face is a continuous skin of hoop pine timber from inside to out. The hoop pine linings bend up the inner walls to form the ceiling and then soar continuous outward past the full height glazing to become the outside soffit. The bold vertical lines of the panel joins are strongly expressed aligning with windows and jambs, they guild the eye up and out so as you step in through the sheltered Southern entrances the landscape flows out in front of you. Every detail required careful thought in design and craft in construction. As two simple boxes joined by a glass link, a house that sits so beautifully in the landscape was deceptively challenging, and stands as a credit to our client passion for their new home & the builders craftsmanship to see it though, it is a end result we are all very proud to have been a part of.

Carefully orientated and sited on the edge of small plateau this house looks out across the rolling countryside of North Canterbury. The 3-bedroom rural family home is an exemplar of simplicity done with care and precision. Tucked in alongside a private limestone quarry with cows grazing in the distance the choice of materials are intuitively natural and implemented with bare authenticity. Oiled random width cedar weatherboards are contemporary and rustic, the polished concrete floors with exposed aggregate tie in wonderfully to the adjacent limestone cliffs, and the clean folded wall to roof, envelopes the building from the sheltered south to the amazing views to the north. Designed to portray purity of form the outer metal surface provides enclosure and shelter from the elements, while its inner face is a continuous skin of hoop pine timber from inside to out. The hoop pine linings bend up the inner walls to form the ceiling and then soar continuous outward past the full height glazing to become the outside soffit. The bold vertical lines of the panel joins are strongly expressed aligning with windows and jambs, they guild the eye up and out so as you step in through the sheltered Southern entrances the landscape flows out in front of you. Every detail required careful thought in design and craft in construction. As two simple boxes joined by a glass link, a house that sits so beautifully in the landscape was deceptively challenging, and stands as a credit to our client passion for their new home & the builders craftsmanship to see it though, it is a end result we are all very proud to have been a part of.

Carefully orientated and sited on the edge of small plateau this house looks out across the rolling countryside of North Canterbury. The 3-bedroom rural family home is an exemplar of simplicity done with care and precision. Tucked in alongside a private limestone quarry with cows grazing in the distance the choice of materials are intuitively natural and implemented with bare authenticity. Oiled random width cedar weatherboards are contemporary and rustic, the polished concrete floors with exposed aggregate tie in wonderfully to the adjacent limestone cliffs, and the clean folded wall to roof, envelopes the building from the sheltered south to the amazing views to the north. Designed to portray purity of form the outer metal surface provides enclosure and shelter from the elements, while its inner face is a continuous skin of hoop pine timber from inside to out. The hoop pine linings bend up the inner walls to form the ceiling and then soar continuous outward past the full height glazing to become the outside soffit. The bold vertical lines of the panel joins are strongly expressed aligning with windows and jambs, they guild the eye up and out so as you step in through the sheltered Southern entrances the landscape flows out in front of you. Every detail required careful thought in design and craft in construction. As two simple boxes joined by a glass link, a house that sits so beautifully in the landscape was deceptively challenging, and stands as a credit to our client passion for their new home & the builders craftsmanship to see it though, it is a end result we are all very proud to have been a part of.

Located in the Houston Heights, the Waverly Residence is a modern home on an established street of two story homes boasting front porch typologies. The family’s desire for privacy resulted in a porch that rotates to internalize most of its function while still addressing the street. For this active family, yard activity and it’s visibility from within the home emerged as a priority for approaching the building’s relationship to the lot. Justifying the building mass to the Northern half of the site reinforces the scale of the design to the surrounding buildings and creates a large southern yard dedicated to play and brisket (is a Texas house a house without a barbeque?). The ground floor is clad in metal panel and a wood rainscreen that peels away from the structure to become both a fence and an entry threshold, blending the registration between the yard's privacy enclosure and the building skin. Variable width fiber-cement siding clads the second floor as a nod to the neighborhood vernacular. The pool and outdoor kitchen sit at the center of the yard, forming an island that divides the open play from private vehicular access at the alley. Photo by Benjamin Hill Photography

Two Birds Photography
Kids' room - transitional kids' room idea in Chicago

Carefully orientated and sited on the edge of small plateau this house looks out across the rolling countryside of North Canterbury. The 3-bedroom rural family home is an exemplar of simplicity done with care and precision. Tucked in alongside a private limestone quarry with cows grazing in the distance the choice of materials are intuitively natural and implemented with bare authenticity. Oiled random width cedar weatherboards are contemporary and rustic, the polished concrete floors with exposed aggregate tie in wonderfully to the adjacent limestone cliffs, and the clean folded wall to roof, envelopes the building from the sheltered south to the amazing views to the north. Designed to portray purity of form the outer metal surface provides enclosure and shelter from the elements, while its inner face is a continuous skin of hoop pine timber from inside to out. The hoop pine linings bend up the inner walls to form the ceiling and then soar continuous outward past the full height glazing to become the outside soffit. The bold vertical lines of the panel joins are strongly expressed aligning with windows and jambs, they guild the eye up and out so as you step in through the sheltered Southern entrances the landscape flows out in front of you. Every detail required careful thought in design and craft in construction. As two simple boxes joined by a glass link, a house that sits so beautifully in the landscape was deceptively challenging, and stands as a credit to our client passion for their new home & the builders craftsmanship to see it though, it is a end result we are all very proud to have been a part of.

Images by Nic LeHoux Designed as a home and studio for a photographer and his young family, Lightbox is located on a peninsula that extends south from British Columbia across the border to Point Roberts. The densely forested site lies beside a 180-acre park that overlooks the Strait of Georgia, the San Juan Islands and the Puget Sound. Having experienced the world from under a black focusing cloth and large format camera lens, the photographer has a special fondness for simplicity and an appreciation of unique, genuine and well-crafted details. The home was made decidedly modest, in size and means, with a building skin utilizing simple materials in a straightforward yet innovative configuration. The result is a structure crafted from affordable and common materials such as exposed wood two-bys that form the structural frame and directly support a prefabricated aluminum window system of standard glazing units uniformly sized to reduce the complexity and overall cost. Accessed from the west on a sloped boardwalk that bisects its two contrasting forms, the house sits lightly on the land above the forest floor. A south facing two-story glassy cage for living captures the sun and view as it celebrates the interplay of light and shadow in the forest. To the north, stairs are contained in a thin wooden box stained black with a traditional Finnish pine tar coating. Narrow apertures in the otherwise solid dark wooden wall sharply focus the vibrant cropped views of the old growth fir trees at the edge of the deep forest. Lightbox is an uncomplicated yet powerful gesture that enables one to view the subtlety and beauty of the site while providing comfort and pleasure in the constantly changing light of the forest.

COR-1200-CAR-AQU - Coral - Bamboo Pendant - 48 - Caramel (Side A) - Aqua (Side B) Coral is based on one of the geometric polyhedra that have interested David since he was a boy. The intricate form is made from just one single component repeated 60 times. Originally designed purely as an experiment, it only became a light later when David tried to find a use for it by putting a bulb inside. This was a pivotal moment. What followed was a whole new direction in exploring lighting structures made from minimal shell-like skins which also act as patterned shadow- makers. FLO-0800-NAT-ORA - Floral - Bamboo Pendant - 32 - Natural (Side A) - Orange (Side B) Floral designed three years after Coral light, is based on a geometric polyhedra forms. The intricate form is made from just one single component repeated 60 times. Floral was designed to offer a softer more decorative offering alongside Coral which is more structured. KOU-0750-NAT-YEL - Kōura - Bamboo Pendant - 30 - Natural (Side A) - Yellow (Side B) Koura was inspired by woven baskets and also from the curled form of the New Zealand native fresh water shrimp, koura, which is its Maori name. Like our other lights Koura is available in a wide range of sizes from small and intimate to very large and dramatic HIN-0900-NAT-NAT - Hīnaki - Bamboo Pendant - 36 - Natural Hinaki (1995) could be classed as David’s first exploration into lighting. In 1995 he made a prototype based on fish traps which are called hinaki by Maori, though often the name is used specifically for an eel trap. They were made from woven vines, some in amazingly beautiful forms. He set it aside for many years, only to develop it later (2011) after Coral had gained international attention.

COR-1000-NAT-AQU - Coral - Bamboo Pendant - 40 - Natural (Side A) - Aqua (Side B) Coral is based on one of the geometric polyhedra that have interested David since he was a boy. The intricate form is made from just one single component repeated 60 times. Originally designed purely as an experiment, it only became a light later when David tried to find a use for it by putting a bulb inside. This was a pivotal moment. What followed was a whole new direction in exploring lighting structures made from minimal shell-like skins which also act as patterned shadow- makers. FLO-0600-NAT-SAL - Floral - Bamboo Pendant - 24 - Natural (Side A) - Salmon (Side B) Floral designed three years after Coral light, is based on a geometric polyhedra forms. The intricate form is made from just one single component repeated 60 times. Floral was designed to offer a softer more decorative offering alongside Coral which is more structured. KOU-0500-NAT-YEL - Kōura - Bamboo Pendant - 20 - Natural (Side A) - Yellow (Side B) Koura was inspired by woven baskets and also from the curled form of the New Zealand native fresh water shrimp, Koura, which is its Maori name. Like our other lights Koura is available in a wide range of sizes from small and intimate to very large and dramatic

Carefully orientated and sited on the edge of small plateau this house looks out across the rolling countryside of North Canterbury. The 3-bedroom rural family home is an exemplar of simplicity done with care and precision. Tucked in alongside a private limestone quarry with cows grazing in the distance the choice of materials are intuitively natural and implemented with bare authenticity. Oiled random width cedar weatherboards are contemporary and rustic, the polished concrete floors with exposed aggregate tie in wonderfully to the adjacent limestone cliffs, and the clean folded wall to roof, envelopes the building from the sheltered south to the amazing views to the north. Designed to portray purity of form the outer metal surface provides enclosure and shelter from the elements, while its inner face is a continuous skin of hoop pine timber from inside to out. The hoop pine linings bend up the inner walls to form the ceiling and then soar continuous outward past the full height glazing to become the outside soffit. The bold vertical lines of the panel joins are strongly expressed aligning with windows and jambs, they guild the eye up and out so as you step in through the sheltered Southern entrances the landscape flows out in front of you. Every detail required careful thought in design and craft in construction. As two simple boxes joined by a glass link, a house that sits so beautifully in the landscape was deceptively challenging, and stands as a credit to our client passion for their new home & the builders craftsmanship to see it though, it is a end result we are all very proud to have been a part of.

Carefully orientated and sited on the edge of small plateau this house looks out across the rolling countryside of North Canterbury. The 3-bedroom rural family home is an exemplar of simplicity done with care and precision. Tucked in alongside a private limestone quarry with cows grazing in the distance the choice of materials are intuitively natural and implemented with bare authenticity. Oiled random width cedar weatherboards are contemporary and rustic, the polished concrete floors with exposed aggregate tie in wonderfully to the adjacent limestone cliffs, and the clean folded wall to roof, envelopes the building from the sheltered south to the amazing views to the north. Designed to portray purity of form the outer metal surface provides enclosure and shelter from the elements, while its inner face is a continuous skin of hoop pine timber from inside to out. The hoop pine linings bend up the inner walls to form the ceiling and then soar continuous outward past the full height glazing to become the outside soffit. The bold vertical lines of the panel joins are strongly expressed aligning with windows and jambs, they guild the eye up and out so as you step in through the sheltered Southern entrances the landscape flows out in front of you. Every detail required careful thought in design and craft in construction. As two simple boxes joined by a glass link, a house that sits so beautifully in the landscape was deceptively challenging, and stands as a credit to our client passion for their new home & the builders craftsmanship to see it though, it is a end result we are all very proud to have been a part of.

Carefully orientated and sited on the edge of small plateau this house looks out across the rolling countryside of North Canterbury. The 3-bedroom rural family home is an exemplar of simplicity done with care and precision. Tucked in alongside a private limestone quarry with cows grazing in the distance the choice of materials are intuitively natural and implemented with bare authenticity. Oiled random width cedar weatherboards are contemporary and rustic, the polished concrete floors with exposed aggregate tie in wonderfully to the adjacent limestone cliffs, and the clean folded wall to roof, envelopes the building from the sheltered south to the amazing views to the north. Designed to portray purity of form the outer metal surface provides enclosure and shelter from the elements, while its inner face is a continuous skin of hoop pine timber from inside to out. The hoop pine linings bend up the inner walls to form the ceiling and then soar continuous outward past the full height glazing to become the outside soffit. The bold vertical lines of the panel joins are strongly expressed aligning with windows and jambs, they guild the eye up and out so as you step in through the sheltered Southern entrances the landscape flows out in front of you. Every detail required careful thought in design and craft in construction. As two simple boxes joined by a glass link, a house that sits so beautifully in the landscape was deceptively challenging, and stands as a credit to our client passion for their new home & the builders craftsmanship to see it though, it is a end result we are all very proud to have been a part of.

Carefully orientated and sited on the edge of small plateau this house looks out across the rolling countryside of North Canterbury. The 3-bedroom rural family home is an exemplar of simplicity done with care and precision. Tucked in alongside a private limestone quarry with cows grazing in the distance the choice of materials are intuitively natural and implemented with bare authenticity. Oiled random width cedar weatherboards are contemporary and rustic, the polished concrete floors with exposed aggregate tie in wonderfully to the adjacent limestone cliffs, and the clean folded wall to roof, envelopes the building from the sheltered south to the amazing views to the north. Designed to portray purity of form the outer metal surface provides enclosure and shelter from the elements, while its inner face is a continuous skin of hoop pine timber from inside to out. The hoop pine linings bend up the inner walls to form the ceiling and then soar continuous outward past the full height glazing to become the outside soffit. The bold vertical lines of the panel joins are strongly expressed aligning with windows and jambs, they guild the eye up and out so as you step in through the sheltered Southern entrances the landscape flows out in front of you. Every detail required careful thought in design and craft in construction. As two simple boxes joined by a glass link, a house that sits so beautifully in the landscape was deceptively challenging, and stands as a credit to our client passion for their new home & the builders craftsmanship to see it though, it is a end result we are all very proud to have been a part of.

Carefully orientated and sited on the edge of small plateau this house looks out across the rolling countryside of North Canterbury. The 3-bedroom rural family home is an exemplar of simplicity done with care and precision. Tucked in alongside a private limestone quarry with cows grazing in the distance the choice of materials are intuitively natural and implemented with bare authenticity. Oiled random width cedar weatherboards are contemporary and rustic, the polished concrete floors with exposed aggregate tie in wonderfully to the adjacent limestone cliffs, and the clean folded wall to roof, envelopes the building from the sheltered south to the amazing views to the north. Designed to portray purity of form the outer metal surface provides enclosure and shelter from the elements, while its inner face is a continuous skin of hoop pine timber from inside to out. The hoop pine linings bend up the inner walls to form the ceiling and then soar continuous outward past the full height glazing to become the outside soffit. The bold vertical lines of the panel joins are strongly expressed aligning with windows and jambs, they guild the eye up and out so as you step in through the sheltered Southern entrances the landscape flows out in front of you. Every detail required careful thought in design and craft in construction. As two simple boxes joined by a glass link, a house that sits so beautifully in the landscape was deceptively challenging, and stands as a credit to our client passion for their new home & the builders craftsmanship to see it though, it is a end result we are all very proud to have been a part of.

Carefully orientated and sited on the edge of small plateau this house looks out across the rolling countryside of North Canterbury. The 3-bedroom rural family home is an exemplar of simplicity done with care and precision. Tucked in alongside a private limestone quarry with cows grazing in the distance the choice of materials are intuitively natural and implemented with bare authenticity. Oiled random width cedar weatherboards are contemporary and rustic, the polished concrete floors with exposed aggregate tie in wonderfully to the adjacent limestone cliffs, and the clean folded wall to roof, envelopes the building from the sheltered south to the amazing views to the north. Designed to portray purity of form the outer metal surface provides enclosure and shelter from the elements, while its inner face is a continuous skin of hoop pine timber from inside to out. The hoop pine linings bend up the inner walls to form the ceiling and then soar continuous outward past the full height glazing to become the outside soffit. The bold vertical lines of the panel joins are strongly expressed aligning with windows and jambs, they guild the eye up and out so as you step in through the sheltered Southern entrances the landscape flows out in front of you. Every detail required careful thought in design and craft in construction. As two simple boxes joined by a glass link, a house that sits so beautifully in the landscape was deceptively challenging, and stands as a credit to our client passion for their new home & the builders craftsmanship to see it though, it is a end result we are all very proud to have been a part of.

Images by Nic LeHoux Designed as a home and studio for a photographer and his young family, Lightbox is located on a peninsula that extends south from British Columbia across the border to Point Roberts. The densely forested site lies beside a 180-acre park that overlooks the Strait of Georgia, the San Juan Islands and the Puget Sound. Having experienced the world from under a black focusing cloth and large format camera lens, the photographer has a special fondness for simplicity and an appreciation of unique, genuine and well-crafted details. The home was made decidedly modest, in size and means, with a building skin utilizing simple materials in a straightforward yet innovative configuration. The result is a structure crafted from affordable and common materials such as exposed wood two-bys that form the structural frame and directly support a prefabricated aluminum window system of standard glazing units uniformly sized to reduce the complexity and overall cost. Accessed from the west on a sloped boardwalk that bisects its two contrasting forms, the house sits lightly on the land above the forest floor. A south facing two-story glassy cage for living captures the sun and view as it celebrates the interplay of light and shadow in the forest. To the north, stairs are contained in a thin wooden box stained black with a traditional Finnish pine tar coating. Narrow apertures in the otherwise solid dark wooden wall sharply focus the vibrant cropped views of the old growth fir trees at the edge of the deep forest. Lightbox is an uncomplicated yet powerful gesture that enables one to view the subtlety and beauty of the site while providing comfort and pleasure in the constantly changing light of the forest.

Carefully orientated and sited on the edge of small plateau this house looks out across the rolling countryside of North Canterbury. The 3-bedroom rural family home is an exemplar of simplicity done with care and precision. Tucked in alongside a private limestone quarry with cows grazing in the distance the choice of materials are intuitively natural and implemented with bare authenticity. Oiled random width cedar weatherboards are contemporary and rustic, the polished concrete floors with exposed aggregate tie in wonderfully to the adjacent limestone cliffs, and the clean folded wall to roof, envelopes the building from the sheltered south to the amazing views to the north. Designed to portray purity of form the outer metal surface provides enclosure and shelter from the elements, while its inner face is a continuous skin of hoop pine timber from inside to out. The hoop pine linings bend up the inner walls to form the ceiling and then soar continuous outward past the full height glazing to become the outside soffit. The bold vertical lines of the panel joins are strongly expressed aligning with windows and jambs, they guild the eye up and out so as you step in through the sheltered Southern entrances the landscape flows out in front of you. Every detail required careful thought in design and craft in construction. As two simple boxes joined by a glass link, a house that sits so beautifully in the landscape was deceptively challenging, and stands as a credit to our client passion for their new home & the builders craftsmanship to see it though, it is a end result we are all very proud to have been a part of.