Mar 18 2014
Land may be finite, but one can always opt to create more space in a home — and it helps to have the expertise of an architect. This year’s Rice Design Alliance (RDA) Architecture Tour will offer a unique view of how to add room to a home with flair.
1810 Bissonnet St.
The theme of the March 29 and 30 tour is “Additionally.” The tour will offer a peak at eight Houston residences that have gotten substantial additions in recent years. Tours will be offered from 1 to 6 p.m. each day.
The homes range in age from 50 to nearly 130 years old, and all have new space that was added since the turn of the millennium.
Two of the homes feature enhancements by professors at the Rice School of Architecture (RSA). The home at 1810 Bissonnet St., built in 1927, features a 2002 addition by Wittenberg Studio, run by Rice’s Gordon Wittenberg.
When his clients came to him, Wittenberg recalls telling them he didn’t like most renovations and additions. “When architects try to conform exactly to the original house, you end up with something that’s a little too big, an endless succession of rooms. You lose the spirit of the original house.”
His strategy was to open up the center of the house with a 20-foot glass wall that looked out over a double lot and contained a new living room and a glass staircase that leads to a master bedroom and bath. “Instead of adding strictly in the vocabulary of the original house, we put a punctuation mark in the middle with the big glass window,” Wittenberg said.
“So instead of having just one kind of environment that goes on and on, you go through the original house, then the big central room with the window, which is very contemporary. Beyond that is a very different environment yet again, with a Texas limestone room that functions as the dining room, and beyond that, the garage.
“It’s a series of very different environments, some more traditional, some more modern,” he said. “We were trying to defeat that endless, boring quality that a lot of additions have,” he said. “I would like people to look at it and say, ‘Wow, I never thought you could have a traditional house with a 20-foot square glass window in the center of it, but it all works together.’ That’s what we were after.”
The second addition on the tour by Rice faculty is to a bungalow at 3503 Audubon Place. The elegant building in the back, which contains a garage downstairs and a light-filled yoga studio upstairs, was designed by Interloop – Architecture, the Houston firm founded by Rice professors Mark Wamble and Dawn Finley.
The home at 1701 Colquitt built in 1925 features a modern addition by RSA alumnus Ben Koush ’02.
Also on the tour are homes at 5219 South Braeswood, 5503 Sturbridge, 823 Peddie, 707 Sabine and 216 Avondale.
The tour is open only to RDA members and their guests, but memberships, which cost $45, can be purchased during the tour at the RDA office in Anderson Hall or at the Peddle, Sturbridge, Sabine, South Braeswood and Audubon Place homes. (New memberships include at least one complimentary ticket.) Tickets are $25 for current members and their guests, and $15 for students and senior citizens. Tickets may be purchased online and picked up at the will-call office at 3503 Audubon Place.