Rear views overlooking the golf course of new residence in West Kendall

The clients for this new house wanted a comfortable but not too large house.  They wanted something original and elegant.  They wanted a master bedroom and bath, two additional rooms with bathrooms, a library, a family room, breakfast area and kitchen.  The wanted the living room, dining area, and library of the house to be formal.  They brought me some magazine photographs of designs they liked.

The lot was wonderful with some features that really could enhance the house.  The first one, that is was large enough allow for a long house.  The second one, that it faced a golf course.  And third, because of the size of the house, we could put the entrance to the garage from the side and avoid having the double-car garage door face the front and compete with the entrance to the house.

We did a series of schematic designs for them.  Almost all of them contained an axis corridor which ran the long way across the house with a smaller corridor which ran from the Foyer to the Living Room.  This became the unifying element of the house.  In some of the designs the corridor was bent in the middle so the house was more of a "V" shape.  In the end the couple selected the straight corridor. 

Where the long corridor, which ran from the bedrooms between the Living Room and the Foyer and Library, met the shorter corridor the ceilings were vaulted.  This gave the house a very elegant entrance. 

The public spaces of the houses had two ceiling heights.  The Living Room and Foyer were 12 feet high while the Kitchen, Breakfast Area, and Family Room were 9'-4" high.  The private areas, such as the bedrooms, were 8'-8" high.

The man was the chef, so to him the most important area of the house was the kitchen.  The Kitchen, Breakfast Area, and Family Room were adjacent to each other with no walls inbetween.  This created a wonderful, roomy, open environment.  Because of the high ceilings were able to have high windows which provided much light to the spaces.