Black + White in Alaska

Our house isn't our dream home but we love the location and our big backyard (hard to find nowadays in the city). I love my garden out back and the south light it gets. And then every time I start to think of moving to a bigger house I remember what it took to get our piano into the family room and that cures me. Moving is not going to happen. We're staying put, just bury our bones in the back.

Of course after remodeling our kitchen then our fireplace last year we've become so keen on the remodeling process that we've been desperately looking for other ways to pour money into our house--apparently we've taken it upon ourselves to make sure the home improvement industry is alive and well. So we've decided to remodel the family room downstairs then take the two small kid bedrooms over the garage and push the whole front wall out farther over the garage to give us a bit of growing room as we start into Life with Teenagers.

So far so good? But Andrew and I try to live by the Socratic "True wisdom is knowing that you know nothing" slogan and we knew that designing an addition was well beyond our capabilities. A neighbor down the street had a similar house and did almost exactly what we wanted to do and I wasn't pleased with their results. We needed an architect--but where?

As fate would have it (if you believe that fate cares about things like flooring products and interior lighting) we have an acquaintance, Bruce Williams of Black + White Studio Architects, who is an architect but we didn't know him that well--I'd seen a couple of his buildings, knew he created contemporary designs but doubted that he'd want to be bothered with our puny little project. However Andrew is gutsy so he called him and set up a time for him to come over to check things out.

Bruce brought his assistant, Michael Gerace, with him and after looking at the house they started asking all sorts of questions. They wanted to know how we used different spaces in our home, what we wanted to use the new areas for, what our personalities are like, how we relate to our children, how our family interacts, all sorts of artsy questions. I told Andrew that I felt like we should have been lying on the couch there was so much analysis going on.

At first I didn't really understand why all the questions were important, the project seemed pretty straightforward to me, but who doesn't like talking about themselves? And after they'd left Andrew and I felt pretty confident that these were the guys for us--we had absolutely no idea what we were in for but it just felt right. I guess all that touchy-feely analysis stuff was starting to rub off--stop me before I start talking about the karma of load-bearing walls.

Anyway, a couple weeks later they called us in to present what they'd come up with and we were in no way prepared.

They plopped down the conceptual drawings which had the basic addition drawn over a photograph of the house, still in very rough stages, and we were shocked. What is that? Was our first thought--though not in a bad way, just a wow-I've-never-seen-that-before way.

There, on the front of our ugly split-level 1970s house was a glassy rectangular cube: simple and elegant but emerging from the house like a protege making his debut on stage. The more we looked at it, the more we saw it and analyzed it and absorbed it and the more we loved it. We didn't necessarily get it at first but we loved it.

Then I realized that what they'd done was really brilliant. They'd taken both of the kids rooms and pushed them forward, cantilevered on three sides out over the garage, and instead of two separate rooms they'd extended the middle dividing wall with a sliding door so that the whole new addition could be one long space or (with the door closed) two separate rooms. The front wall facing out alternated with vertical cabinetry and floor-to-ceiling glass in front of built-in shelving and desks to take advantage of the mountain view while the windows on both ends were designed to supply fresh air by swinging out on different pivot points and maximize the currents.

The wood floor of the addition was divided from the carpet of the old structure by a strip of frosted glass covering a recessed trough of lights so that the room would be partially lit from below. The whole thing had become a studio for our children, a space for them and their creativity while being so useful and beautiful as to make me want to take over the rooms as soon as they're out the door for college.

The more we studied the design the more we realized that it was perfect. Not in the transient, casual way a good cake or a sunny day can be "perfect," but perfect as a structure because the space was exactly suited for its occupants and their needs. The design had no more or no less than what was needed, it was creative and it was beautiful. The only problem was the rest of the house that was still attached.

What to do with the rest of the place? Our original plans called for replacing the exterior of the house to update it from the pre-made, fake, pieced-together 1970s look. We'd asked Bruce and Michael about our options for exterior materials and it became apparent that they were not limited by traditional supplies. Basically any material you could nail or cement to the outside was fair game--I nearly expected them to present us with a picture of the house wrapped in alligator skin--and I got downright tingly at the prospects of what they'd come up with.

But when we sat down a second time it was a little disappointing--they said that they didn't think we should cover the house with anything, that we should clean up what we had, give it a high-quality paint and leave it at that. Their reason? Well, part of the reason we wanted a new exterior was to blend in the addition with the rest of the house. This addition? It was going to blend about as well as a Hare Krishna dancing at the Bolshoi--there was no "blending" this.

Again, I didn't get it at first and was disappointed because I wanted to see something as creative and beautiful as what we'd seen before but the more I heard what they were saying the more I agreed. If you already have a design that is perfect why would you change it to blend with the surrounding inferior structure? If you had a surrounding structure that will never be able to match the addition why make it ridiculous by wrapping it in something that doesn't fit? The house ends up as something that it's not, pretending to be modern art but failing miserably (and an expensive failure at that). It would just look silly.

So the more we thought about it the more we knew Black + White was right. Instead they came up with some clever landscaping and other exterior ideas that would make the design work for the house and for the neighborhood.

Why am I telling you this long story? Well because it's been really, really fun to experience. I enjoy seeing creative minds at work and though I may not understand everything that's going on I love learning--and I've learned a tiny something about design, a lot more about what I like and how much I admire Black + White's designs. I've come to trust what these guys say will work and what will not work because they've got this project so right. It's fun to realize that this could be the future of Anchorage as the city comes to grips with what to do with all these 30 year-old homes and more home owners want to remodel. Ah, the whole thing has made me crave a re-reading of The Fountainhead. Seriously.

It's also been fun because we talked about this whole experience with some friends of ours over dinner and they got as excited as we did. They're building a new home in Spokane and decided that maybe Bruce and Michael were the men for them too and since Black + White designs structures all over the place last I heard the mighty Design Duo was flying down to Spokane to camp out on the 20-acre property and check it out first hand. What a life.

So why aren't I posting pictures of the design? Well because it's wild and it's new and it's going to get lots of looks from the neighbors--while it's fun to give people something new to think about (Andrew and I each have a rebellious streak) I don't want to post pictures while it's still only an idea. When I have something real to show, probably in a month or so, then I'll let you all gawk. Andrew's joked that we can probably recoup the cost of construction by charging admission because people are going to want to see the inside of this one.

As one of the kids said, "Well at least we won't have to worry about people not knowing where we live, all we'll have to tell them is 'we live in The Cube' and they'll know where to find us."