The longer COVID-19 rages on and we spend more time at home, the more likely we are to wonder how residential architecture could change in the future. As part of San Francisco Design Week in June, architect Leo Marmol, managing partner at Marmol Radziner, discussed how indoor-outdoor living strategies employed by early modernist architects feel especially beneficial and relevant today in promoting health and well-being at home.

“Modernism is about this notion of connection. I think it’s too easy to think of modernism as a style and really oversimplify it into flat roofs and sterility. It’s not about that. It’s about a relationship. It’s about connection. Connection to ourselves and our families in the way a plan flows and communicates internally, about a connection to the rhythms of the environment outside our buildings,” Marmol said.

Expansive Windows and Doors Welcome Views, Natural Light and Ventilation

Elements like sliding glass doors, big pivot doors and oversize windows open up a home and connect it to the environment in a natural way. “In many ways, simply opening up the doors and windows will invite and allow a much more healthful interior environment,” Marmol said. “I think anything that allows us to see and physically leave our buildings and be in the landscape is positive.”

The Los Angeles home seen here, designed and built by Marmol Radziner, takes full advantage of its tree-filled location between a hillside and a canyon road in the Santa Monica Mountains. The home was designed to celebrate the natural environment and foster a strong indoor-outdoor connection. Much of the house opens up to the landscape in the form of sliding glass doors and walls.

In this photo we can see how the home also connects to the landscape through views. The dark interior allows the grasses and sycamore trees outside to pop in the interior living spaces, creating an almost painting-like effect. Deep roof overhangs pull in the landscape even more, and along with the building’s orientation protect the home from solar gain.

In Australia, another place that allows for indoor-outdoor living nearly year-round, this home’s dining and living areas open up completely to the landscape, with sliding walls creating a wide-open connection between spaces. Additionally, wood flooring inside the house and exterior wood decking help to meld the two living spaces together.

In this Los Angeles home designed by the architects at Walker Workshop, a hallway leading to the home’s bedrooms has glass walls on one side that open to a sunken courtyard. When the glass is slid open, as it is here, the hallway and courtyard connect to become an indoor-outdoor living space.

Indoor-outdoor living seems natural in places with mild climates, like California and the Mediterranean, but what about regions that experience more extreme weather or have a lot of bugs? In the Baltimore-area home seen here, a wall of windows provides year-round connection to the outdoors, with views of the surrounding woodland changing throughout the year.

Place architecture: design added a screened porch off the home’s living room, further bridging the divide between interior and exterior spaces. An expansive three-panel bifold door separates the two spaces and can be left open on a nice day to welcome in fresh air while keeping bugs out.

Natural Materials Warm Up a Space and Connect It to the Outdoors

Though the lines and details of modern homes may be clean and simplified, that doesn’t mean the homes need to be cold and sterile. For Marmol, the ideal modern interior is warm and comfortable. “For us, it’s about natural materials. It’s about texture,” he said. “We often use the exterior materials that literally slide indoors. Those materials tend to be natural materials, organic materials that add an element of texture and connection to the earth.”

The entrance seen here, to a home for a multigenerational family on Whidbey Island, north of Seattle, features a rustic flagstone wall and cedar boardwalk. Native Pacific Northwest landscaping envelops the modern farmhouse complex, built by Dovetail General Contractors.

The same cedar decking from the boardwalk flows inside the house, creating an easy transition between the interior and exterior spaces. It also brings the feeling of being outside into the house, enhanced by the dappled shade from surrounding trees that dances on the walls and floors.

The walls are clad in stained alder board, and clear cedar planks run along the ceiling. This marriage of different wood types adds texture, warmth and interest without overwhelming or cluttering the space.

In the Santa Barbara, California, landscape seen here, designed by RMLA - Rob Maday Landscape Architecture, warm-tone flagstone pavers create garden paths, surround the pool and spa, and form the floor of a petite guesthouse. Stone covers the interior walls as well, creating the feeling of an intimate garden courtyard inside.

This new home in the Hamptons, New York, by Bates Masi + Architects features a strong connection to the landscape and honors the midcentury modern dwelling destroyed by Hurricane Sandy that used to occupy the property.

One way the architects achieved the connection to the landscape and nodded to the midcentury history of the property is through the materials they used. They opted for simple, natural materials indoors and out that add a feeling of warmth to the clean, modernist space. Exposed cross-laminated timber panels span the ceiling, continuing outside to form large roof overhangs that shade the home. Large-format flagstone pavers cover the floors inside and out, blurring the lines between house and garden.

An Intimate Scale Can Increase Efficiency and Human Comfort

“Modernism is about efficiency. It’s not only inefficient to build [homes at large] scales, [but] it’s inefficient to maintain those scales. It’s nonsustainable,” Marmol said. “We always want to build the smallest house that works for the program, that works for our clients, and therefore allows the most garden possible. We would encourage the smallest home that still works for the client.”

In Massachusetts, this new prefab home from Acorn Deck House sits lightly on the land. Its understated exterior and 1,247 square feet of space recede into the background, leaving more room for outdoor living and for the landscape to command attention.

Inside, the home features two bedrooms, two bathrooms, a two-car detached garage and a central great room. Though the space is open and airy — with floor-to-ceiling glass walls and clerestory windows above welcoming views of nature — it feels intimate and comfortable for a family.

“I think so often with large homes, they lose their intimacy because the scale becomes unidentifiable to our notions of the home. They start to trigger more emotions of commercial environments,” Marmol said. “Most of our lives, most of time, is about our connection with our families. We’re trying to support that connection as best we can. That’s about scale and proportion.”

Windows, Balconies and Terraces Can Open Up to the Sky and Views in Multiunit Buildings

For those living in apartments or other high-rise dwellings, it’s still possible to connect to the earth and nature around you. “Other things open up for us up in the air. The sense of view — you are connected in a much broader way — and if we can open up and see the city, we can feel more a part of it. Outdoor living spaces are still possible with balconies and terraces,” Marmol said.

The New York City bedroom seen here, by Stephen Moser Architect, is flooded with natural light from the floor-to-ceiling steel-framed glass doors. When opened, the doors draw you out to a balcony garden high above the ground.

The intimate garden, planted with grasses and climbing ivy, offers a taste of nature many stories above the ground. The view of the blue sky and the surrounding Manhattan skyline connects this home to the world around it.

Source: https://bit.ly/2EeoIuk

Annie Thornton
Houzz Editorial Staff