Birchwood Terrace

With four young children, the homeowners wanted to maximize functionality while maintaining a clean, contemporary aesthetic. The abundant storage solutions are integrated into rooms or tucked away, and wall-sized sliding doors enable an open layout while allowing spaces, including the mud room and kids’ area, to be closed off when preferred. Efforts were made throughout the house to create moments that the children could enjoy—a three-story climbing wall occupies a shaft for a future elevator, the home theater doubles as a stage for home performances, and the nook under the lower-level stairs became an integrated playhouse. 

The home’s pool wing helps define a large outdoor room, enhancing the sense of a European courtyard landscape experience. It is recessed into the sloping rear of the lot so that the roof, with a field of rooftop planting, is envisioned as an extension of the landscape on the perimeter of the property. The pool wing features sliding and folding glass doors that, when open, provide a 30-foot-wide opening to the courtyard beyond. Its linear skylight, stretching across approximately 80% of the length of the pool house, provides natural lighting to the space and is illuminated so that, even in the evening hours, it still casts indirect lighting over the entire pool.