Inspiring Double-Height Living Spaces

One of my favorite American architecture practices, W.G. Clark and Charles Menefee, made hardly any constructed works together before they parted ways in 1999. Rooted in their Carolina circumstance, the houses they designed share quite a few attributes, but one stands out in particular: double-height living spaces. In each event the living area became the center of the compact plan, connected visually to the adjoining spaces on both amounts and full of light from ample glazing.

Inspired by these tall spaces located in Clark and Menefee’s designs, I browzzed houzz to find different examples of double-height living spaces at a similar modern vein. Listed below are ones that exhibit some of those features: connections, lightness, along with the modern.

Webber + Studio, Architects

With this house in Austin, Texas, neighborhood architects Webber + Studio started with a simple box and wound up with an L-shaped plan that creates a romantic outdoor area. In the practice of the development, they created a double-height emptiness in the front of the house, a striking first impression. This distance is also related to the rest of the house, as the stairs peeking out actually lead to some bridge with bedrooms and a study in the long leg of the”L.”

Kanner Architects – CLOSED

This house in Malibu, California carries a large living room that fits with the size and scale of the house (at about 8,000 square feet). Also an L-shaped plan such as the previous photo, the distance this is illuminated by glass on either side; an elevated walkway traverses the distance. Note what seem to be roller colors on peak of the windows on the right; sunshading such as this certainly takes a motor and remote control.

Kanner Architects – CLOSED

Another Malibu house by Kanner Architects carries a double-height living room, very similar to the previous photo with its fireplace and upper-floor walkway. Here the two glass exposures are on perpendicular walls, opening the corner up visually.

Modern house architects

Here is yet another double-height living room with glazing on other hand, even though here the glass swings or slides open to make the room semi-outdoor. A third glazed side of the massive room faces a small terrace and an outdoor fireplace. What is clear in this area over many others collected here’s the structure required for this volume: both the curved columns on the left and also the concrete shear walls on the right.

Elliott Kaufman

This house in Sonoma, California is the first of two designs by Cooper Joseph Studio presented here that utilize double-height living spaces. Amazingly this house is a renovation and reconfiguration of an unexceptional house that featured a wraparound deck. This last piece is preserved but redesigned, overlooking the living area as well as the landscape. A wood lattice over the deck can help to color this open interior from sunlight.

Elliott Kaufman

Looking at the concrete wall at the Sonoma guest house, it is clear that the double-height living area is a means for dealing with the site’s change in altitude. Within this view, the tall distance is surprisingly romantic, a fantastic setting for looking at the horizon outside the window.

Elliott Kaufman

The next house by Cooper Joseph Studio, also near Sonoma, is a split-level guest house. The distances are oriented around a concrete walls, abandoned, with a romantic seating corner carved out of it. This nook may be at odds with the scale of the distance, but it appears to work well, and it expresses the depth of the concrete wall that is important.

Searl Lamaster Howe Architects

If connection to the next floor is 1 characteristic of double-height living rooms, the house in the suburbs north of Chicago makes that connection explicit. Like a residential panopticon, the den”supplies for a very workspace but remains visually and emotionally linked to the rest of the home’s actions,” in accordance with architects at Searl Lamaster Howe.

This example in the Pacific Northwest demonstrates that double-height living spaces are not restricted to suburban houses. The living rooms at those lofts are further highlighted by operable garage doors equipped with glass…

. . .on two sides! Not only is the living room literally opened to the outside, a terrace on one side becomes an extension of the interior. The tall distance makes it possible for these doorways to go up without having to turn into the area as is typical with garage doors — a potential battle with two doorways at a corner.

Ian Moore Architects

The first of two houses by Australian architect Ian Moore presented here, the Dodds House features a double-height living area overlooked by means of a bedroom mezzanine. Sliding glass walls extend the distance outside. Even though the circumstance is still suburban, the design recalls Le Corbusier’s Unite d’Habitation, a slab of apartments with double-height living rooms at every one.

Ian Moore Architects

This second house I’m revealing by Ian Moore is the greatest in minimalism (at least when the photos were taken), with sparse white side walls and ceiling. The full-height folding glass wall radically connects the living room to the courtyard.

Ian Moore Architects

In these pictures the tall quantity of the living area appears to exist to call attention to the formal simplicity of the design. Its white walls remember a museum. All the owner needs are now large-scale paintings to complete the allusion.

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