Dihedral House: From Frumpy To Fabulous
Dihedral house was in need of a makeover. And Alloi architects did a great job! Here’s how
By Diane Small
If you’d lived in a home built in the 1940s for 25 years, chances are you’d think it was time for a change. And that’s exactly how the owners of Dihedral House felt!
They wanted to expand and upgrade their house with the help of Alloi architects. The owners initially approached the firm to review a set of plans competed by a local architect for a second opinion and to prepare for the construction phase.
However, after a thorough review, the Alloi team suggested a complete revamp of the entire project. And a complete revamp ensued!
The Modernisation of a 1940s Structure
The existing house, as with many post war homes, was organised to a very segmented and strict plan. It included separate kitchen, living, and dining spaces. Several decades of remodels changed the flow from room to room – for the worse. For example? There was a very small second story addition that could only be accessed by a dangerously steep staircase. Alloi aimed to remedy these poor remodels by opening up the house to a more open plan layout.
The house’s inhabitants also wished that the interior and exterior spaces could be better connected. They hoped this would boost family togetherness and enhance social activities with visiting friends.
As with many couples today, they also needed space for a home office, which they wanted to double as a guest room for visitors. Sustainability, indoor air quality, comfort and energy efficiency were also very important to the current owners.
There could be little doubt that the Alloi team had a challenge ahead of them!
Sustainability Features
Alloi are certified passive house certified designers, so they introduced and incorporated design features that reduced thermal bridging, increased indoor air quality, and incorporated solar shading and high-performance glass for windows and doors.
All of these features contributed to a higher standard of energy efficiency. Typical insulation was placed within the wood stud cavity which rapidly transferred heat through the walls and roof. An encapsulation of the home with an exterior rigid insulation was employed to reduce heat transfer through the wood framing.
At the roof, the main source of heat transfer, Alloi doubled the effective insulation value to reduce reliance on mechanical cooling and lower their client’s energy bills.
Bolstering the interior environment, they installed a recycled newspaper blown-in cellulose insulation throughout the interior and exterior walls. Brilliant! This feature creates a home that is both energy efficient but also peacefully quiet to keep exterior noise to a minimum.
An Old Feature Made New
Today, many young homeowners might not be familiar with crawlspaces. But these low ceilinged areas under the main part of the house used to be common. Today, they are usually filled with moisture, mould and rodent decay.
Since 50% of the air we breathe comes from underneath our homes, it was essential to resolve this indoor air contamination issue! Alloi did so by way of a process known as encapsulation.
This process can vastly improve your home’s health – as well as your own! It involves first removing all debris from the crawlspace, then levelling the earth in a process called grading in preparation for the encapsulation.
Ridge foam panels are then added to the interior side of the existing concrete foundation before completely wrapping the space with a heavy-duty polyethylene membrane. Today, the crawlspace is now a clean, serviceable room that allows the family of Dihedral house to breathe cleaner air.
The Heart Of The Home
The heart of any home is undoubtedly the kitchen, and Dihedral house is no exception!
To make this room more welcoming, structural design improvements were achieved by removing half of the existing home’s gable roof and rotating the roof plane upward to create a large double height space in the new kitchen.
A large 15 foot island receives floods of natural daylight under a 16 square foot skylight which sits 20 feet above on the new raised roof cathedral space. A linear white high-efficacy LED light fixture provides focused task lighting over the sink.
Alloi’s team built custom rift white oak kitchen cabinets with pre-finished maple interiors, complete with hidden pull out steps to access the hard to reach storage. Every appliance has a home, and every feature of the house has a place.
Vertical circulation is achieved by way of a custom designed and built steel stair in the heart of the home’s great room. A single steel tube serves as a focal structural element to host the solid white oak wood stair treads which seem to float off the white double height wall.
Hidden steel plates inside each step integrate with the structural framing to achieve this open tread design. The guard rail is composed of steel aircraft cable and 1/2 inch thick steel plates.
Alloi blackened the stainless steel to allow the material composition to remain visible while offsetting it from the white interiors and zero-bezel air conditioning vents.
Connections To Outdoors
As mentioned, the owners of Dihedral house wanted less division between indoor and outdoor spaces. This was achieved with the he addition of a ground-level sunken concrete family room. This allows for a better connection to the back yard. It also serves as a flexible space for movie nights, parties, and gatherings.
Privacy is facilitated by sliding floor-to-ceiling walls, effortlessly creating a secluded haven when closed. A custom floating media cabinet conceals the audio and visual equipment.
Dihedral house also features beautiful landscapes. Direct water and support concrete walkway pads are finished with a steel-troweled top-cast concrete process. Dymondia and thyme fill spaces between each stepping pad. These are contrasted with creeping red and blue fescue and a wonderful olive tree.
Hidden speakers in the landscape add music to the sunken conversation pit grounded in mixed Mexican blue and grey pebbles. A custom made concrete fireplace provides warmth to late afternoon parties and is flanked by low profile poured-in-place concrete benches.
Clever use of modern features like concrete, blackened steel and aluminium, and large windows connecting the indoors to the outdoors have truly modernised Dihedral house into a modern home. You could say it’s gone from rather frumpy to fabulous!
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