Urban Dwelling: How to Take Advantage of a Small Lot
Modern Single Family Houses Highlight Optimized City Living
Recently I espoused the benefits of multi-family housing, many that fell into urban contexts. To further highlight modern city living, there are also single-family houses designed for the same environment. These examples illustrate how architects take advantage of relatively small lots (most are infill lots, with buildings on both sides of them) to give homeowners what they are looking for. They're the best of both worlds marrying the coziness of home life with bustling big city life.
The aptly named Silver Top House in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania features a metal-clad box rising from a brick base on a corner lot. The project is actually a number of volumes, each clad with a different material, culminating in a roof deck. This space and a small backyard filled with grass give the owners some valuable outdoor space in the city. This is one of the most important considerations for urban dwellers.
This corner residence is also in Pittsburgh, but designed by a different architect, is long and low. Its composition is striking with a curving wood volume anchoring volumes in white and green. The curving wood wall is not arbitrary: it is actually a direct renovation of the machine shop that existed on the site.
The most vertical — read: urban — part of the project is the garage painted bright green. Above are two of the house's three bedrooms and a terrace. The top floor also provides access to a generous roof deck atop the second-floor volume in white.
From Pittsburgh to Sydney, Australia, The Dodds House sits in an area with a mix of commercial buildings, industrial structures, and even Victorian terrace houses. Architect Ian Moore excels at clean, modern designs, and he executes one here, almost an antithesis to the surrounding cacophony.
Another view of the house shows the openings to be minimal (three windows and one door on the two corner elevations), giving privacy to the residents. This is accentuated by the louvers that cover the horizontal windows. Most of the light comes via a courtyard at the rear of the house. This outdoor space is accompanied by a roof deck that hints at the columns and beams that project slightly above the rooftop in the photo.
This UK house shows a unique situation. Situated behind a brick building, the low bar in wood and metal juts into the middle of the block. A terraced side yard is off the lower level of the house. The house is tucked into the landscape very carefully, so as not to block the neighbors from getting some sunlight.
This infill house on Manhattan's Upper West Side shows how a contemporary construction — terracotta "gabions," or square tubes spaced evenly apart in a frame — give the residents some privacy and relate to the traditional brick of the neighbors. Behind the gabions is full-height glazing; these terracotta pieces also provide some shade.
This infill townhouse is located in Seaside, a New Urbanism community on Florida's panhandle. Form-based codes dictate much of the different project's exteriors, but this contemporary house manages to survive amongst its neo-traditional neighbors, which comprise most of the town. Fairly suburban houses can also be found in Seaside, but the location of this house overlooking Ruskin Place gives the wall facing the street an urban character.
This San Francisco house, featured in my ideabook on Cor-Ten Steel has since been remodeled into a stainless steel facade. It illustrates an extreme way of creating privacy for the occupants. Perforated steel and translucent glass only hint at what is going on behind it. Not appearing like a typical house, it could be just about anything. A yard in the back and skylights above bring daylight and outdoor space to the residents.
Another home in San Francisco shows how wood slats (another architectural element I explored in an ideabook) can help create privacy in urban contexts. The tight spacing of horizontal wood pieces, usually in front of glass walls, cuts down on the visibility of objects inside, while allowing daylight to filter in. This house features slats on the ground floor, propping up a band of windows above.
This second example uses wood slats on the second floor and solid wood panels on the ground floor. Projecting through the slats upstairs is a square window.
This renovated San Francisco warehouse, humorously called the Tehama Grasshopper, keeps the exterior much "as is" and carves up the concrete frame interior to bring light inside and create a courtyard. A penthouse addition is visible in this photo from across Tehama Street.
This home in Australia features Ian Moore's conversion of a late 19th century grocery warehouse. The building fronts on two streets; pictured is the garage entry into the narrow house. The opposite side is the main entry, a full half-level above the garage. Moore painted new elements black, like the steel infill of the window and garage. It sensitively fits with the existing while extending its use into the 21st century.
More:
Let's Hear It for Duplexes and Townhomes
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More:
Let's Hear It for Duplexes and Townhomes
6 Tips from Great Urban Gardens
5 Great City Homes