Facets of light and shadow, facets of experience – a sunroom set in a garden, open to all parts of the day, reaching out into the site to capture light and breezes, for varied inner needs. Like many post-war homes, Linda’s home was cut off from her beautiful site. In a sense, we created two open hands – a new sunroom and a screened porch – that reach out into the site, gathering light and air and beauty.

Yet the sunroom also creates a plinth – an acropolis garden, for Linda’s bedroom, her secret garden up in the trees – her sacred realm. And then, around the corner, is a highly eccentric screened porch, canted this way and that as the site calls it forth.

Beyond the poetics, this project further explores building methods that will endure – using primarily steel for exterior components where wood is typically used (wood rots in twenty years, especially in wooded lots like Linda’s). The screened porch is all steel, as is the sunroom’s facia/ plinth. Exterior cladding is a dense cementitious product (longer lasting than Hardiboard) and the windows are by Serious, which are about three times more energy-efficient than commonly regarded good windows. The concrete slab floor in the sunroom provides thermal mass and has radiant floor heat.

The site was fully landscaped, replacing lawn with indigenous woodland plants. The living roof is planted with local sedums and succulents.