Real-life test for an experimental house
Architect’s family moves into unique ‘built laboratory’ to gauge methods, materials
SEATTLE— Right smack dab in Seattle’s Roosevelt neighbourhood, BUILD LLC is conducting an experiment in modern architectural design. The Eckert family is living in it. Kevin Eckert is the founding partner of BUILD, which since 2011 has created “Case Study Houses” to test new cost-effective concepts, materials and methods — and to demonstrate them, in their real-world application, to clients. Eckert and his family (wife Erika, an artist, and their 10- and 13-year-old sons) moved into this 3,442-square-foot “built laboratory” in April 2015. Or, as they call it: home. The experimental abode (“a miniMoMA,” Kevin says) certainly stands out — and up — with its “very unforgiving modern exterior,” all shiny, glassy and boxy.
“When I’m in the kitchen looking out the window, I see people slow as they drive by,” Erika says.
Variable No. 1: That kitchen? It is not on the main floor, where kitchens typically live.
Instead, a reverse floor plan sites the kitchen, dining room, family room and Erika’s pink-wallpapered powder room upstairs for ultimate privacy, light and views.
“I don’t understand spending the best floor on where you sleep,” Kevin says. “We don’t mind getting exercise, so it doesn’t bother us to go up two flights of stairs to get here.”
(He’s counting the outdoor, concrete-then-wood tiers to the elevated front door as the first, “hidden,” flight.)
In the dining area, 10-foot-tall sliding-glass wall panels by LaCantina Doors glide open to maximize the southern light anytime the weather is even halfway decent. They did not get to “glide” without a little heaveho trial and error: “We had to reengineer the whole system,” Kevin says. “The earlier ones took a running start.”
Up another level, and a steeper, ship-ladder staircase, a green rooftop deck accessed by a hatch has evolved, as science will do, from a conceptual outdoor dining space into a more pragmatic gathering lounge. “We realized that right away,” Kevin says. “It wasn’t very realistic to think of dining and living up there.”
Throughout their home, the Eckerts opted for light rift-sawn white oak cabinets and flooring rather than the conventional contrasting colours.
“We wanted everything else to pop more,” Erika says — such as the custom dining table in rich American walnut, and the home’s especially meaningful artwork.
The Eckerts’ last space was a 2,000square-foot town house in BUILD’s Park Modern building in the University District, where they had no basement and no yard but plenty of neighbours below and on both sides. And two sometimes-bouncy kids.
“It feels like the perfect time with boys this age to have a house this size,” Erika says.
Now, for the first time, the boys have their own bedrooms and bathroom; a roomy backyard; and a sprawling basement rec room outfitted with a green-taped practice soccer “goal” on one wall, a comfy futon, a TV and, because even the most modern home needs at least a touch of retro, an original Atari game system. “We’re just getting going on teenager-land,” Kevin says (speaking of enlightening whole-family experiments).
“We’re hoping all the kids will hang out here in high school.”