On a point of land looking across one of the Eastern Shore's most picturesque waterways, we have recently finished work on a house for a family from the Washington DC area. These photographs are from our last site visit this past July, as the house was nearing completion. The summers are very warm and humid there, of course, so we designed this house for passive cooling that would reduce the number of days air conditioning is required for reasonable comfort. The house has a "thermal chimney," a large open vertical space at its center, which induces air flow through the house and out the high windows of the chimney wall.
The house is clad in two kinds of wood siding, both of which are used in traditional architecture in the region: vertical board and batten siding, typical in barns and outbuildings, and cove siding, often used on 19th century houses. We painted it all white to reflect the harshest of the sun's rays.
The house has a pool and a poolhouse which look back toward the dining and living rooms, and out to the water beyond. Landscape work is going at the house now and we are hoping to have the finished house professionally photographed early next spring. We just learned that the house will be part of an Eastern Shore House Tour this Christmas--so the pressure is on the owners now to buy some furniture!
No comments:
Post a Comment