An airy entry instead of a cave

BURIED DEEP IN A notch at the center of a U-shaped house, this entry could have been a liability. But architect Elida Schujman of Mill Valley, California, turned it into an asset that serves several functions.

Originally, the ranch-style house had been L-shaped, with an attached garage projecting toward the street. The former owners had converted the garage into a bedroom, but new homeowners Suzanne and Brooke Halsey wanted an attached garage as well as the extra bedroom. The only place they could build the garage was on the other side of the entry, and they were afraid that adding another broad form to their already rambling house would give it the look of a fort--and turn the resulting recessed entry-way into a cave.

To open up the mouth of the notch, an exterior storage closet was removed from the wall at the forward end of the bedroom wing. A permanent planter was built around the front corner of the wing to soften the facade's blocky appearance.

A white trellis with a 6-inch grid of 1-inch-square hollow tubing steps down to a gate of the same pattern. The grid itself is slightly recessed from the new front edge of the house. Now the entry is clearly but gracefully defined.

A gabled roof also distinguishes the entry (it runs perpendicular to the house's roof gable). The entry roof is generously glazed, creating the atmosphere of a bright atrium. The height of the gable, the natural light flooding through the panels, and the unobtrusiveness of the grid all combine to make the space seem large, airy, and inviting.

Plants abound in the entry corridor, heightening the atrium effect. On top of a new storage closet, stepped planter boxes lined with galvanized trays hold a variety of plants that thrive in the filtered light; these are watered by an automatic drip system.

To let some of the natural light that floods into the atrium pass into the house, triangular glass panels were added above the front door.

COPYRIGHT 1993 Sunset Publishing Corp.
COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group