KINTSUGI

This home is a story of a Colorado homecoming for an adventuresome family of five, who weathered the COVID-19 pandemic in Japan. They collaborated on the design of the remodel of their old home remotely and over Zoom, a remote collaboration that led to a beautiful, co-created result.

The owners’ experiences in Japan helped inform the design. They discussed scraping the home, but in the spirit of reducing their impact, the owners chose to take the Kintsugi approach and infuse the existing conditions with beauty.

The design transformed an old, cramped kitchen, living, and dining space into a seamless, modern main level. This new space features a large kitchen, a sunny “treehouse” dining area, and a soft separation to the owner’s living area, with a two-way fireplace connecting to the outside, generous glass windows, and openings to take in the Colorado sunshine.

With the complexity of a family which enters the home both from the front and the back, we introduced custom-designed, Japanese-inspired floor-to-ceiling oak screens which concealed and revealed a host of utilitarian spaces running down the central spine of the home: 2 oversized closets, laundry, and utility storage.

The 15’ kitchen island, locally fabricated, is the heart of the home. For a family that loves to cook and gather for meals, the detailing of the island was critical to the success of the space. The kitchen is book-ended by a cantilevered, glazed sunny dining area nestled in a tree on one end and on the opposite end, a steel and glass partition creates a soft separation to the living room, which is organized around a 2-sided fireplace and glass patio doors for this outdoor-loving family.

Making lemonade with a difficult upper level, we re-tooled the bedrooms and bathroom to celebrate the wonderful light and views of the upper level, introduced a wonderful Flatiron-view rooftop deck at the primary mini-addition, and carved privacy and storage for their boy-girl-boy upper level dwellers.