That sums it up, I love the interior, hate the exterior.

I like the front because it states exactly what the house is but am having trouble reconciling the back. Love the windows in the interior but it is, for me, much to much of an open floor plan, although nice for entertaining. The den would have to become a tv/reading nook.

Do you know the square footage of the shown space?

Are the floors plywood? In some places they look like hardwood but around the fireplace they look like plywood stained to match the hardwoods. The addition doesn't seem to add much living space for the amount of bulk it adds to the back of the house. I would have liked to see windows that echoed the horizontal lines of the original windows. But it could have been worse in the 1980s. How about a Palladian window? Maybe square windows arranged in a stair step pattern? They did show restraint. I do like the house--I want that den!

I am not sure it added much square footage. I think what it did was open up the lower walkout basement to the upstairs.
One of the good things about current transitional housing is that you *can pretty much do whatever you want to the inside. With this house, the architecture really dictates what the inside is going to look like to a great extent, no matter how you change the surfaces.

"This is also an example of the basic kind of open plan that people seem to want, but this type of modernism is mostly rejected in terms of its surface treatments. People seem to prefer the essential volumes of this house interior, but want it combined with a traditional exterior and interior surface finishes."

Once again, I don't understand the design elements, but I would be delighted to be in that house. All the natural finishes and the light appeal to me. It seems that the light well adds a great deal - with all the light it brings in. I am surprised by the comments re the exterior, since I find both the front and the back exterior appealing. The change in interior elevations, with a stair or two between elevations, is visually appealing, but I do wonder about the risk of falls.

We have just finished building a house that reflects some of the elements in this house, particularly the window walls, the wood floors and some wood paneled ceilings and walls, and the open floor plan. It just feels good to me. The person who designed our house has a degree in design and a graduate degree in architecture. I was delighted when I could use information gleaned from your posts on brutalism, Palimpsest, to say I thought that our house design, with its metal exterior and concrete and rock masonry heater showed a brutalist influence. The designer was impressed and I was pleased. Thank you for all that you contribute.

I hope you will post pictures. So few people get to build houses that are unique and personal in design.

A beautiful house. If I didn't know about the addition, I would think the house was that way from the start. The huge window in the back is okay with me.

I love the big windows in the kitchen, which doesn't seem to be a very common feature. The house design suggests a public-oriented lifestyle that includes a good deal of entertaining. Not exactly my way of living, but if I were invited to a gathering in a house like this, I'd enjoy the architecture and the setting.