Mid-Century Remix is an anomaly. Tucked into Atlanta’s Virginia Highland, a neighborhood of 1930’s English cottage-style homes, recent teardowns and subsequent McMansions is a 60’s mid-century modern home with Eichleresque design connotations. Californian Joseph Eichler, America’s only “modernist merchant builder”, built nearly 11,000 speculative homes starting in the 1940’s. The clean lines of his homes remain fresh today and have substantially contributed to the revival of interest in mid-century design. Steve Jobs, who grew up in an Eichler-style home, once stated his “appreciation for Eichler homes instilled a passion for making nicely designed products for the mass market”. Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak grew up in an Eichler home in Sunnyvale, California. How a vaguely Eichler mid-century home came to be constructed in Virginia Highland is not known to the current owners. However, having lived in California, they recognized the form immediately and purchased the house. Our assignment: expand the kitchen and dining area into the nonfunctional carport with its too steep drive, enlarge the living room, enhance the interior and exterior “Eichler” effect (due to the inadequate implementation of the original design) and renovate the basement. We responded by emphasizing the horizontality found in Eichler designs: extending “wings” to each side for privacy, adding horizontal bands of glass, removing odd diagonal beam brackets, employing shiplap siding, adding a new 5’ wide pivot door and (given the immediacy of the house to the street) adding a low horizontal wall to establish a public/private boundary. Parking for the house shifts to an apron linked via a walk (to the right of the entry). A new stair to the basement replaced a tight, torturous circular stair. Basement renovations include the boys’ bedroom, a mini-indoor soccer field for the couple’s two young sons, a guest bedroom addition, a new bath and a backyard deck. Total conditioned space including additions is 1,400 square feet for the first floor and 1,400 square feet for the basement. Renovations and additions were accomplished on a very tight $220,000 budget. Our efforts transcend applique by recognizing, elaborating, interpreting and enhancing near historic forms in a modern way.
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