The Studio-House project is designed for the client who needs a large display and work area integrated with the home environment.  The imagined client is a graffiti mural artist who uses the house’s dynamic and expansive wall surfaces as canvases for his artworks.

The design encompasses a renovation of both the exterior shell and the entire interior of an existing barn without modifying the building’s footprint.  Making use of the natural light, the northern facade is topped with a massive 1.5 story skylight, allowing diffuse daylight to fill the atrium space of the house at all hours of the day.  The large central atrium acts not only as the primary source of light and warmth, but also provides visual connections between different spaces within the house and ample wall space for artistic adornment.  The scale and proportion of the intreior elements create a dynamic and interconnected space that is somewhat disorienting, but held together by the connectivity of the central atrium.  To lighten the contrast between the dynamic spaces, while at the same time calling attention to the connections between them, a zig-zagging curtain window cuts through the skin of the building.  The snaking window follows the path of circulation within the building, and connects at the top to form a roof skylight above the central atrium space, further uniting the dynamic interior spaces.