Collaborators: kitchen and landscape design by MRS, kitchen and deck construction by Christian Restrepo, landscape installation by In Bloom, photos by Dessa Lohrey

Concept: chartreuse, entertaining, scallop edger, ecological landscape design, la croix color matrix, floor matches cat, pass-thru window, door aligns with disco ball, morning light.

Time: 2021

Place: Reynoldstown, Atlanta, GA

References: La Croix Sparkling Water; Travis Beck’s Principles of Ecological Landscape Design , AIA Georgia Merit Awardee

Overview

The La Croix House is a lighthearted partial renovation of a 1930’s urban single-family home, inspired by our client’s favorite sparkling water brand, her love for entertaining, traveling, and her cat Oates. While the result is intentionally playful, serious functional, structural, and ecological problems were resolved through an interdisciplinary collaboration, which prioritized a sense of place, site health and connection between interior and exterior spaces.

Connectivity

The existing kitchen was located at the rear of the house, allowing us to focus on creating strong connections between the interior and exterior spaces. We achieved this through the use of thoughtfully placed glazing, gently terracing the back deck down to the yard, and deliberate use of color. The new glass doorway to the backyard is on axis with the front door and a large pecan tree in the back. A row of new double-hung windows serve as a pass-through to the deck and provide morning light. We chose to paint the rear walls of the home a warm red to frame the deck and extend the warmth and sense of place into the crushed stone social area in the yard.

Site Health

Heavily Compacted soil, impervious surfaces, and improper grading were creating major water management issues on the site. A tiny house rental unit is located at a relative low-point on the site and was prone to flooding during heavy rain events. We removed over 100 square feet of impervious concrete adjacent to the tiny house, and replaced it with a crushed stone path. The concrete was up-cycled into pavers, providing a path between two new rain gardens. Water flowing from the neighbor’s yard was also causing erosion to occur, stripping the large pecan tree of nutrients. We resolved this by introducing shredded wood mulch and a smattering of native plant material to regenerate the soil health and slow the water down as it moves around the site.