Aspinwall Hill House

How do you reinvigorate an historic family home, maintaining its character while adapting it to meet a family’s modern lifestyle and creative work?

Tucked behind a sweeping Victorian home is a dramatic artist’s studio set high in the trees, and new gathering spaces with walls of glass that flow seamlessly into the outdoors. These surgical renovations and additions, each individually tailored to the family's needs and existing conditions, unfold one by one from the driveway through extensive new landscaping to a new entry and expansive family room with chef’s kitchen, and winding upwards to the glass walled studio high above. A project with complex constraints and construction challenges required close collaboration between design and construction teams.

Previously cramped and with limited access to the gardens outside, a reconfigured kitchen and family room becomes the new point of arrival and center of life, whether hosting large gatherings or regular family meals. A newly added dining room straddles the inside and outside of the house, with large sliding doors recessed into the floor for a seamless connection to the patio outside.