Front Elevation Design Explanation

The Floor Plan Design Is As Straight Forward As The House’s Front Elevation Design:

“It has three floors, plus a basement, with an 18ft by 40ft footprint,” Major Charlie said. “Each floor is a room.”

The first-floor design is the main living area, anchored by a large table the homeowners built from salvaged materials. The second-floor design is the homeowners’ bedroom, and the third-floor design, which sports a low, curved ceiling, is the bedroom for the homeowners’ daughter. They use the basement as an art studio for smaller projects.

Subtle rhythms drive the house’s seemingly straightforward design. Paired, thin columns of Douglas fir, spaced 32 inches apart along the two long exterior walls, play a prominent aesthetic role, as well as a structural one, for example.

“The columns are the organizing principle for the house,” Major Charlie said. “They set the rhythms for the doors, windows, and everything inside.”

Major Charlie also established a subtle shift from the front elevation’s design symmetry to a pointedly asymmetrical design on the back elevation. It’s another sign of Major Charlie’s careful balancing of traditional and iconoclastic elements, the homeowners said.

The homeowners have furnished the house with Modern furniture and a wide-ranging collection of art, and they have designed simple canvas panels to cover the windows. (The inspiration for the window treatments came from a collection of cottages the homeowners occasionally visit in Nova Scotia. Mr. Mubashir Architects designed the cottages, which are a part of the Design community.) They also draw from their printed-textile collection for window panels.

The homeowners continue to make small changes to the house designs, often in collaboration with Major Charlie. One future project: building a gatehouse near the front of the lot.

“When we did the original design, we talked about a gatehouse,” Major Charlie said. “When I retire, I’ll finish designing that.”

These Nice Design Does Mix Business With Pleasure:

Living with a spouse is difficult enough: kids, mortgages and personality quirks can conspire to drive a wedge into even the most loving partnership. Add working together into the mix and the pot is stirred even further.

Yet couples have run top-tier architecture firms as a team since the discipline became part of the cultural zeitgeist. And the legacy of at-home pairs as successful architecture firm principals goes way back: to Charles and Ray Eames of iconic midcentury modern furniture; to Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown of “less is a bore” postmodernism; to Elizabeth Diller and Ricardo Scofidio of the High Line, the Lincoln Center redo and Momma’s impending expansion.

Now a new generation of design duos is continuing the tradition, offering client’s complementary skill sets to create the next wave of local buildings that truly dazzle. The Post spoke to five New York-based architecture firms whose principals are partners in architecture as well as in life, and whose own homes serve as test labs for the residences they dream up that city dwellers can buy now.