Blue Horizon

Two houses on neighbouring lots in University Place, Washington, designed as a pair. They share a plan, a roofline and the same four materials, and they still do not read as one house built twice.

The difference is in how each one meets the ground. The lots fall away toward the trees, so the two units sit at slightly different heights and the mirrored plan lands differently on each side.

Each home is 3,106 square feet over three levels, with a two-car garage on a 6,500 square foot lot. The brief was a pair that belongs together without looking like a development.

One architectural language, spoken twice. Both houses use the same three-part composition: a dark charcoal brick base that holds the building to the ground, a lighter body above it in warm off-white panel, and cedar at the gable and around the entry, where the house is actually touched.

The roof is the part you notice first. A single asymmetric slope at three in twelve, lifted toward the north so the upper floor collects sky light rather than direct sun. Seen from the street the two roofs mirror each other, which is the clearest sign that this is two houses and not one long building.

Black frames every window and door and runs as a line under the eaves. It is the element that holds the three materials together and keeps the facade graphic instead of busy.

The site is wooded and it slopes, so each unit steps with the natural grade across three levels: the lower floor partly held by the ground, the main floor arriving at the height of the garden. At the back the house opens in layers, sliding doors onto a covered deck, a deeper covered patio below it, an uncovered deck above at the height of the canopy. In the evening the lighting in those cedar ceilings turns the rear elevation into a lantern.

From the street the two houses are close enough to be read together and far enough apart to stay separate. Each has its own garage, its own porch, its own approach across the lawn. What repeats is the grammar, brick and panel and cedar and black frame, not the house.

The planting keeps to the same logic. Low shrubs and grasses at the base of the building, gravel paths, stone where the grade needs holding, and nothing that would not already grow here.

Three levels, three ways of living. The lower floor is the quiet one: a gym, a steam shower, a sunken hot tub, a guest suite with its own bath, and a second living and dining area opening onto the lower patio. The main floor is the social one, with an open kitchen, a living room and fireplace, a pantry, mud room and home office, and ten-foot ceilings throughout. The upper floor is for sleeping, a primary suite across the full depth of the plan with its own deck, two more bedrooms with walk-in closets, a loft and the laundry.