Mid-Century Redux
Chevy Chase — Maryland
TypeAddition + RenovationClientPrivateLocationChevy Chase, MDYear2019–2021
A largely intact midcentury modern house becomes the canvas for a careful renovation that honors its lineage while making room for the decades ahead.
The existing house was a well-constructed, largely intact, midcentury modern house located on a sloping site in a leafy Washington, DC suburb. Beyond maintaining the integrity of the existing architecture, the clients approached the project with three major objectives: incorporating age-in-place elements, improving connections to the rear garden, and addressing long-deferred maintenance. The result is a home transformed without being unrecognizable.
Expanding the Midcentury Language
A new rear addition echoes the proportions, material palette, and careful detail language of the original house. The addition accommodates a main-level primary suite while improving circulation between kitchen, living area, and the sloped rear garden.
Heart of the House
The renovated kitchen opens to the sloped rear terrace through a new glazed corner, dissolving the boundary between cooking and landscape. Warm wood cabinetry and terrazzo reference period details without pastiche.
The Ground Beneath
New covered porches and terraced stone platforms descend the sloped rear yard, threading the home into the landscape. The connection between inside and out — once an afterthought — becomes the organizing logic of the addition.
A Restrained Palette
Materials throughout are chosen to speak to the existing house without imitation. Wood, glass, and painted steel — updated for current performance standards — maintain visual continuity from old to new. Daylight is the finishing touch.
All Photographs
