ART[I]FACT HOUSE
Location: Barrington, RI
Completed: 2017
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Program: Single-family residence
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Size: 2400 sf
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Project Team:
Jason Wood, Adrienne Wood, Rachel Stopka, Shou Jie Eng, Tristan Mead, Jay Walsh, Bruce Cail, Graham Cottrell, Michael Rotatori, Tyler Brown, Michael Deschenes, Steve Karlin, Ethan Barlow, Ben Barlow
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Electrical: New England Energy Concepts + FIF
Plumbing: Richard Smith Heating Service + FIF
HVAC: Air Distribution Systems + FIF
​Plaster: Triple P Plastering
Roofing: C & J Construction
Stone Countertop: Quality Tile
Photos: Nat Rea + FIF
This home has a past. An age old Cape Cod with one bedroom, one bath, an attic, a basement, and a screened-in porch. from [in] form purchased the property in 2012 as an opportunity to design and build our first spec home. Our practice is to listen deeply, to hear what has been passed on. In order to create we dwell in spaces that comfort and inspire one’s individuality; out of individuality we construct our collective place in time. Our attempt is to bring from into form.
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Home is an interplay of spaces that are at once common and private. Niches and nooks are carved into layers of salvaged material, allowing for intimacy and discovery throughout the connected ground floor kitchen, dining, and living areas. Rising woodsmoke carves a void connecting the ground floor to the floors above. Brick chimney has been turned inside out, impenetrability replaced with connectivity. Salvaged windows create views between otherwise separate spaces across the void. Sound and vision between spaces can be permitted or attenuated by opening and closing combinations of interior doors and windows. Window weights are revealed, their complement to individual strength celebrated.
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This project stems from our desire to feel the history of the house that once was, now pulled apart; rebuilt with space for air, for light, for memory, for curiosity, for connection. Space was found between the existing home’s foundation and the push of current zoning setbacks on the newly constructed upper volume.
Exterior void, held by a cantilevered corner, invites one to enter. Interior void, upon entry, is an invitation to explore, to rise. An open stair of fir and steel climbs to a bridge of reclaimed framing. We bridge the void between past and present. The addition of this triple height space allows one to hover adjacent to the former exterior wall, to explore the meaning of outside and inside.
We loft privacy over the public domain. The ladder to the loft is an individual invitation. An escape akin to treehouse. One is wrapped in materials that hold the history of the house, the feeling of being outside is undeniable. Lofted, one can imagine their own world, separate from the rest of the house yet open to its sounds and activity. A space for connecting to one’s individuality simultaneous to others, a sharing of space(s), a home.
BEFORE
