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A Cantilevered Home on a Small Lot Overlooking Lake Washington

04.09.15 | By
A Cantilevered Home on a Small Lot Overlooking Lake Washington

With only a tiny footprint to work with, Chris Pardo Design: Elemental Architecture had quite a challenge when it came to designing this 3,300 square foot home overlooking Lake Washington in Kirkland, Washington. The clients wanted a house that size and with a neighboring home requiring vehicular access, it took a creative solution to solve all of the issues required to make Kirkland 3 happen.

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The home is clad in a Corten standing seam steel which naturally rusts over time. The rest of the house is covered in exposed concrete and a cedar rain screen.

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The home sits on a steep, vegetated lot so the city prohibits what can be excavated, meaning they had to work with a small flat pad of land.

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The solution was to build the main living level into a cantilevered structure by using a vierendeel truss. The volume protrudes almost 30 feet out over the shared driveway. This accomplished the necessary square footage while not going beyond the limited footprint.

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The kitchen is a SieMatic design with clean lines and open upper cabinets. The lower cabinets are a grainy, darker wood topped off with white countertops.

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The main living space is long and open with one wall that’s almost all windows with views of the lake.

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The house is outfitted with LED lighting and smart controls, meaning everything is controlled with built-in iPads!

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Both volumes have large roof decks that look towards Seattle.

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Photos by Dale Tu.

Caroline Williamson is Editor-in-Chief of Design Milk. She has a BFA in photography from SCAD and can usually be found searching for vintage wares, doing New York Times crossword puzzles in pen, or reworking playlists on Spotify.