It’s the Seattle space-wheedle
The skinny on a home that gets the most out of a very narrow lot This three-bedroom, 2,100-square-foot was built on a 25-foot lot by sinking it into the ground. Windows draw light into the kitchen, dining and living areas.
There were a lot of potential pitfalls on the narrow path to Adam and Ari Atkins’ brand-new modern home.
Starting with the narrow lot itself: a seriously, severely, almost-prohibitively skinny 25by-100-foot rectangle in southeast Seattle.
Builder Donald Baptiste of LDB Homes had a vision — and quite a bit of trouble finding an architect to execute it.
“I knew, with the height restrictions and the narrow lot, it’d be difficult to get square footage and light,” he says. “I knew I really needed architects who could innovate and think outside the box.”
Enter Castanes Architects, not big fans of any box at all.
“Donald said, ‘We’ve got this lot. Nobody wants to do it,’ ” founding architect Jim Castanes says. “It’s got to be fun. In order for it to be fun, it’s got to be challenging. (Project designer/manager) Jordan (Cowhig) and I put our heads together and thought, ‘Let’s drop the house into the dirt.’ In Seattle, as space gets tight, you’re going to see that.”
The partially buried project was originally called the Upside-Down House, but, Baptiste says, “That quickly changed because Jordan embraced the house. It’s now ‘the Jordan.’ ”
“They came up with this great design,” says Baptiste, the builder. “It was a challenge, and a lot of fun. They were truly the only ones; all the other ones told me I was crazy.” The Atkinses had been looking for the perfect house. “We didn’t want a townhouse,” Ari says. “Adam wanted to just turn the key and move. I wanted a lot of character. With a lot of spec homes, they’re cookie-cutter and sterile. We were at our wits’ end and taking a break, and this house popped up. It really met both of what we loved: We could completely move right in, and it didn’t look like a box.”
Instead, the Atkinses’ new 2,100-square-foot, three-bedroom home looks like a creatively geometric, light-filled, extreme-space challenge met — or, better, exceeded.
“The house is very deceiving from the outside; it looks small,” Cowhig says. “The roof, dictated by code, makes the upstairs light and bright. It ended up as an odd zigzag thing, trying to find every piece to take advantage of, and the popouts on the sides add volume.”
Inside, extra-special elements add a functional, custom touch: bookmatched walnut cabinets, nine-foot ceilings, a chef ’s kitchen, windows flooding the airy staircase with natural light.
“When we did this house, it was really important to pay attention to the details — things like architecture walls,” Baptiste says. “Most people wouldn’t do that, but it’s important to the esthetic. Like the cedar fence — most would go with a regular pine. You can see if you’ve got an ugly fence. And the aluminum shelves: We could have stuck wood up there. We wanted to do a technologically automated smart house, as maintenance-free as possible. The siding, they don’t ever have to paint.”
And that, especially now, is met with great appreciation by its young and new-parent homeowners. “We were spending so much money, with a baby on the way,” Ari says. “It’s so livable and lowmaintenance and easy.”
The Atkinses’ baby is tucked from time to time in a peakedceiling nursery just for him. “It’s the only room with customization,” Adam says— they added shelves, a nanny cam and storage over the closet.” The home satisfied Adam and Ari Atkins’ desire for a place that “didn’t look like a box,” while window popouts on the second floor add volume.