KARR pad : apartment for a young bachelor

 KARR pad  : apartment for a young bachelor 
This basement apartment is located in the family home of the young owner, who wished to create his own “bachelor pad” separate from his parent’s row house above. He is an avid cook, and frequently holds dinner parties and entertains, so a large kitchen open to the rest of the space was a priority. 

In order to transform the dark low basement into a “singles” home, extensive digging and underpinning were required, resulting in 9’ ceilings. New windows and LED strips were added for additional light and atmosphere. The apt was divided longitudinally into two zones, one more fluid for cooking and lounging (kitchen and living); the other more formal, defined by green storage “cubes”  (entry, dining, and den ) 

Durable materials were selected for longevity, and include exposed and painted brick and steel, heated concrete floors, and viroc panels. Splashes of color (green and red) play against the mostly neutral black and white palette.

URBAN ZEN

E Street Residence

Clients:

Artist, actress, dreamer

Psychiatrist, thinker, dreamer

Project Inspirations:                           Spatial objectives

Mind and body.                                      Place to daydream.

Light and shadow.                                 Place for gathering.

Silence and Laughter.                           Place to study.

Memory and dreams.                            Place to relax.

Friends and family.                                Place to be alone.

Food and aromas.                                 Place to be together.

Art and books.

Materials

Wood, concret, steel, glass, brick, viroc, color, light, texture

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Eating In

Kitchens Before and After KUBE

KUBE has developed an expertise in kitchen transformations.  They operate both as functional, efficient spaces, and also as sculptural statements within the home.  The following three projects show a range of ideas and explorations:

The "Architects Kitchen" is a mid-century modern home in Kensington, MD, where the compact kitchen was opened up and updated with a combination of colorful custom cabinets and industrial materials (viroc, concrete countertops, and exposed steel). Millwork by Potomac Woodwork. 

"Lenny's Place"  is a “bachelor pad” off U Street in Washington, DC, where the kitchen acts as a feature element, with LED lighting, a “folded” ceiling, and colorful island. Millwork by Potomac Woodwork.

D St. Kitchen  in Capitol Hill features a curved countertop that transforms into a sculptural bench.  The kitchen is designed to be highly efficient within a tight space, and it looks out through full-height glass doors onto an intimate deck space

KUBE 2 GO

Creativity at any Scale : KUBE 2 GO

Examiner Coverage on 5th Street Project!

DC architecture firm takes on narrow Capitol Hill rowhouse

Charlotte Safavi

Special to The Washington Examiner

The task of seamlessly remodeling a narrow, cramped and poorly lit historic rowhouse is never easy, but Richard Loosle, of Kube Architecture, managed just that in the Capitol Hill neighborhood of the District.

"Our ground floor was dark and choppy, with a formal dining room in front we rarely used and a staircase and wall separating that from the kitchen and backroom, which we used a lot," said Vince Willmore, who shares the two-bedroom home with Orie Snider.

The small kitchen also was parallel to the stairs, a minus, while the backroom opened onto the patio, a plus. Loosle saw that replacing the old French doors with an entire glass wall and sliding doors would immediately increase the light flow and open up the overall space. The bigger challenge remained the bulky staircase.

"It was clear the whole stair-and-kitchen wall had to go," Loosle said. "Problem was because the rowhouse is so narrow, there wasn't enough room to move the staircase."

Knowing the homeowners were keen on one-room living, Loosle came up with a creative solution. He couldn't move the physical location of the stairs, but he could make them visually lighter with the right material and good design.

"I got rid of everything surrounding it and then remade the staircase in steel, which is a strong material that allows you to work with narrower stringers and related elements than usual," Loosle said.

He also added slim pale-wood stair treads and barely-there horizontal steel pickets to make the overall staircase as thin and transparent as possible.

The kitchen then was reoriented against a sidewall, with gray-white laminate cabinets. An eat-in island was added. The island has a lower profile than average, so as not to impede the front-to-back flow.

"Though we wanted the space to be modern, we also wanted our home to have warmth and be uncluttered," Willmore said.

To add that warmth, Loosle worked with natural and stained ash for built-ins and the island, which has a cedar-stone breakfast bar and counter that wraps around its base on the entry side, blending beautifully with the bamboo floors.

The clean-lined walls and ceilings are softened up with variations of gray-blue paint hues. Loosle also developed modular storage throughout; the largest unit includes a frosted, glass-door powder room, as well as a utility/mechanical closet.

"We kept the original tin ceiling in the old dining room," Loosle said, "but we cleaned it up and painted it to tie in better."

The fireplace, which was nonfunctional, also in the front space, was clad and serves as a separator between a built-in desk unit and new dining-area storage. Eventually, a dining table and chairs will be placed there at a 90-degree angle.

"The home really suits our lifestyle now," Willmore said. "It's one big and bright, yet warm, integrated room, with a great connection between the indoor and outdoor spaces."

To see more images of the 5th Street Residence, click here.  

Projects: Greenvale

KUBE is working with a young family in Bethesda to reconfigure a 1960’s era rambler into an open, light-filled, modern space. The oddly-configured, three bedroom home is being transformed through the addition of two “wings” that will create an open courtyard in the back.  This is a major renovation project that includes the removal of interior walls and the ceiling over the front living room.

The previously divided kitchen, dining room and living room are being transformed into an open floor plan with large windows and doors to the new rear courtyard from Western Window systems. The clients are from Central America and love the idea of minimal finishes with lots of texture, including walls of concrete block, stained concrete floors, viroc, and exposed steel.  An outside deck made of ipe connects to the kitchen and kids' play room, with the material running from outside to inside. Completion is scheduled for this spring or early summer –  more updates soon!

KUBE in the News: The Washington Post

Kube Architecture: Modernists in a city of tradition

The "See Through House" was named
for the glass floor panels that channel
sunshine from skylights through
the center of the home. 

By Deborah K. Dietsch, Published: March 15

Plastic window sheeting flapped in the cold breeze as architects Janet Bloomberg and Richard Loosle-Ortega unrolled drawings to consult with the owners of a Chevy Chase rambler, now gutted to expose rafters and floor joists.

Lawyer Patricio Grane, 39, and radiologist Alexia Egloff, 35, listened to Bloomberg’s ideas before weighing in on the placement of lighting fixtures within the open floor plan. They already had agreed to bare cinder-block walls, concrete floors and huge expanses of glass.

“We wanted something different, not the same old brick and drywall,” says Grane, who estimates that he and his wife will spend $410,000 on the construction. “We picked these architects because they specialize in contemporary design. That’s all they do.”

Bloomberg, 47, and Loosle-Ortega, 58, specialize in offering edgy alternatives to the standard residential remodeling of crown moldings and Shaker cabinets. Their eight-year-old firm, Kube Architecture, is known for transforming urban rowhouses and suburban split-levels into flowing spaces defined by bright finishes and hard-edged details.

“We call ourselves the warm modernists,” says Loosle-Ortega. “We are different from other architects who do contemporary work in our use of colors and textures.”

Janet Bloomberg, Richard Loosle-Ortega,
with homeowners Brigitte and
Gaines Mimms.

During a tour of Kube’s most recent renovations, the architects pointed out a tangerine acrylic countertop, red cement-board paneling, cork floors and multi-hued mood lighting to prove that minimalist design need not be cold or austere. They use such vivid elements to animate clean-lined interiors as open as lofts.

Few people strolling past their remodeled rowhouses would guess that behind the historic facades are sleek spaces in which most everything is new. “They take very traditional housing and slice it up in ways to create a different experience inside,” says Stanley Hallet, professor emeritus and former dean of Catholic University’s architecture school, where Bloomberg and Loosle-Ortega have taught. “Both of them come out of an academic tradition, and it’s been interesting to see them apply ideas about materials and transparency to their work.”

Read the entire article... 

DC Focus

Roger K. Lewis

Fairfax County’s Hollin Hills is a happy experiment in modernity

By Roger K. Lewis 

In coming decades, the character of metropolitan Washington’s growth will be mostly urban, not suburban. Even in traditionally suburban Maryland and Virginia counties, redevelopment will be transit-oriented with pedestrian-friendly, grid-like street patterns, relatively high density and mixed rather than single uses.

Virtually all new housing in future smart-growth communities will be multi-family apartment buildings and attached dwellings rather than single-family homes. But existing subdivisions aren’t disappearing. Many suburban developments have aged and evolved positively, among them Hollin Hills in Fairfax County, an award-winning residential community of 450 homes about two miles south of Alexandria and the Capital Beltway, between Fort Hunt Road and U.S. Route 1.

Planned in the late 1940s, architecturally unique Hollin Hills was built in the early 1950s during the post-World War II housing boom. Architect Charles Goodman and landscape architect Dan Kiley designed the project for developer Robert C. Davenport, who wanted to build attractive but modestly sized, affordable homes for America’s middle class.

According to Goodman, architect for the original Washington National Airport terminal, the goal at Hollin Hills was to provide “ideal country living for urban people.” And in 1950, the Hollin Hills area of Fairfax County was still “country.”

Hollin Hills is aptly named. The wooded site is extremely hilly and, as Goodman observed 60 years ago, it was a complex parcel of land that most builders would hesitate trying to develop. Yet it was the site’s dramatic topography that inspired not only the subdivision’s road and lot layout (lots were at least one-third acre), but also the unprecedented contemporary architecture Goodman created to fit the site.

The site planning and architectural strategies are immediately apparent. The twisting contours of steep hills and meandering valleys dictated the labyrinthian road network. Likewise, each house was carefully wedded to the natural terrain of each lot, thereby preserving existing tree cover, providing privacy and capturing views and sunlight as much as possible.

Thus, one, two and occasionally three-level houses were perched on hilltops or ridges, nestled into hillsides or placed on less steeply sloping valley floors. Rather than being consistently aligned, houses were deployed with greatly varying setbacks and orientations on differently shaped lots that front continuously curving streets and cul-de-sacs. The community also includes a number of public parks and interconnected trails frequented by deer; tennis and swimming facilities; and the Hollin Meadows Math and Science Focus School.

But Goodman’s late-1940s, innovative house designs, epitomizing mid-20th century modernism, are what sets Hollin Hills most distinctly apart from other single-family home subdivisions in the Washington metropolitan area.

Over the decades, the original Hollin Hills houses proved too small for evolving tastes and lifestyles. Consequently, owners enlarged and modified homes. With design review committee approval, new rooms, porches, decks and accessory structures were added. Kitchens and bathrooms were remodeled, cabinetry and finish hardware redone, mechanical and electrical systems upgraded, roofing membranes replaced, high-performance windows installed. Yet original home exteriors facing streets remain essentially unchanged.

He used a common architectural language for the modest, wood-framed homes. Inside, open floor plans spatially unify each home’s communal living, dining and kitchen areas, making each space feel larger. Outside, instead of steeply pitched, gabled roofs, flat or low-slope roofs top each house. Roof edges are visually thin with narrow facias and short overhangs. Rooftop skylights and high-wall, clerestory windows complement extensive floor-to-ceiling glazed facades that stretch across living-dining-kitchen spaces and bedrooms. Where glass stops, exterior wood cladding takes over. Brick and stone are also used for chimneys, exposed foundation and retaining walls, terraces and steps.

The most visible and dramatic change is the Hollin Hills landscape. Today broad, dense canopies of huge deciduous trees and tall evergreens surround, soar above and shade homes and streets. Flowering ornamental trees and shrubbery abound. Residents have cultivated gardens for all seasons in front, rear and side yards, many with little grass to mow. The landscape, as much as the architecture, imparts a strong, community-wide sense of unity and harmony.

Sharing feelings of stewardship and proud of the legacy, Hollin Hills homeowners have sought National Register of Historic Places designation. Former resident Michael Sorkin, an architect and well-known critic, summarized the legacy. “Hollin Hills is one of the truly happy experiments in modernity, a place that — because of the unique conjunction of style and time — remains the kind of community so many modernists dreamed of, a beautiful place of social activism, love of nature and potluck picnics.”

Roger K. Lewis is a practicing architect and a professor emeritus of architecture at the University of Maryland.