Copper House
Belmont, Massachusetts
Copper house is one of the rare renovations we chose to undertake. The original house was a Colonial box with vinyl siding; it was poorly sited, and a garage cut it off from a spacious yard. Yet it had charm: cozy rooms, a downstairs bedroom suite, and ample space. The project called for—in essence—adding a house to the existing house, and the complexity and challenge proved too hard to resist.
We created a slot for the addition by demolishing the garage and using surplus driveway space. This move anchored the new house in the landscape while ensuring that it wouldn’t eat up valuable green space, despite its large scale. The most challenging aspect was one of fit: by style and scale. Stylistically, we were marrying a modern glass and copper house to a Colonial. Moreover, integration was daunting: the high-ceilings and open volumes of the planned addition did not align with the Colonial’s tighter and more compressed spaces. To confront the central challenge—of stitching together old and new—we used strategies that both hid and heightened transitions. Outside, we put a new wrapper on the Colonial: a cedar box. We kept practically everything as it was: window frames became sculptural indentations; old panes were replaced with single sheets of glass. Inside, we put a three-story atrium, topped by six large skylights where old and new meet—and this became the formal entryway. The front door is in a small vestibule that opens into the atrium. A steel-and-glass stair leads from the stone atrium floor to upper level of the addition. A second sculptural stair —a steel-and-glass bridge—crosses the atrium and links the second floors in the addition and the Colonial, heightening the contrast. A curtain wall of glass runs the length of the kitchen and living spaces, bringing the outdoors inside. The plan is open; the ground-floor stair, granite dining room server and bluestone fireplace are designed to delineate rooms.
The existing Colonial was wrapped in cedar, and faux panes were replaced with single sheets of glass. By leaving the old window frames, the design creates a sculptural quality on an otherwise blunt façade.
Section drawing
To temper the aggressiveness of the angles made by so much glass, concrete and steel [Rose] used rich woods: mahogany to frame windows, and rosewood, mahogany and bamboo in the floors. Also, subtle colors… The walls (the palest pumpkin and yellow) reflect the summer greens and autumnal reds and golds of the surrounding maples and honey locusts. In this way, the house feels almost organic. The copper shifts color with sun and snow; the cedar is a willing canvas for rain. It’s quite a contrast to the predominant Victorians and Cape Cods, which don’t embrace the frigid New England winter so much as hunker down and bear it.
Paige Williams, The New York Times, 2005
A curtain wall of glass runs the length of the kitchen and living spaces, bringing the outdoors inside. The plan is open; the ground-floor stair, granite dining room server and bluestone fireplace are designed to delineate rooms.
A second sculptural stair—a steel-and-glass bridge—crosses the atrium and links the second floors in the addition and the Colonial, heightening the contrast.
