Awards:

Courtyard House

Weston, MA

The new owners of the 1958 “contemporary” appreciated its openness and its layout, featuring three wings surrounding an original exterior courtyard to the back, especially after moving from an early-century Arts and Crafts house. The family had teen and college-age children and the owners were ready for a change in lifestyle, including a shift in possibilities of what a home could include. This California-style ranch home is atypical for the Boston area but provided many basic elements the owners were seeking, and they chose to renovate existing spaces rather than create an addition. Programmatic and design challenges were to improve circulation conflicts, inform visitors of the layout of the building upon entry to the house instead of through trial and error, rectify poor quality detailing and choice of materials, reduce inconsistent wing-to-wing and room-to-room detailing and provide design continuity, and introduce a human scale to large rooms.