Family Circle, A unique architectural remodel on Mount Tabor envelops its
owners in warmth.
by Amara Holstein for Portland Monthly Magazine, November 2011.
ON THE SLOPING SHOULDERS OF MOUNT TABOR, Edgar Papazian and Michelle Lenzi’s
house catches the day’s last rays under the winking brows of its arched
metal dormers. From the front, it’s a simple white box topped with a clever
cocktail of corrugated steel and arcs. A stroll around back, however,
reveals a more dramatic effect: circles and swoops have been carved into its
framework, giving viewers what seems to be an intimate peek at the warm wood
and round surfaces inside. `I have a fascination for the 1950s and ’60s,
when people were really optimistic about the future and curves were seen as
aerodynamic,’ says Papazian, who designed the form himself. `You could call
this Eero Saarinen on a very, very small budget.’
The couple is originally from New York. Enticed by walkable neighborhoods,
thoughtful urban planning, and a vibrant foodie community, they packed up
their car for Portland in 2008. But perhaps even more compelling for
Papazian, an architect with his own practice, Doon Architecture, was the
dream of building his own home. `New York is built – it’s there already,’ he
says. `Here real estate is affordable, and we could actually have some fun
with a project. It was about breaking the mold and trying something
different.’
After house hunting for several months, they came across the perfect place
for their design tinkering: a basic 1940s-style, 1,000-square-foot house
with a sound foundation, well maintained but never renovated aside from some
shag carpeting. `We weren’t erasing a past that the house had – it wanted to
be redone,’ says Lenzi, a genetics researcher. `It really didn’t have any
character, it was just a blank slate.’
Papazian immediately decided to flip the home’s axis from front to back
(instead of side to side) to focus attention on the backyard, and extend the
house upward instead of outward. Inspired by tunnels, caves, and other
shapes with `a visual dynamic that lead up into space,’ he decided to redraw
traditional top-heavy dormers into something lighter and more modern. The
night he first saw the house, Papazian went to a café and sketched the large
sweeps of curved dormer overhangs that he envisioned enclosing the house on
both the front and back. The remaining pieces slowly fell into place after a
year of living in the space, figuring out what they liked (the small size,
the wooded backyard) and what they didn’t (lack of views to outdoors,
closed-off rooms, and ground-floor bedrooms). The first sledgehammer blow
fell in June 2009, and after nearly a year of living in a 12-by-14-foot
plastic-enclosed room in the basement, the couple was finished with the
project – and Lenzi was eight months pregnant with daughter Giovanna.
The most defining features of the finished exterior are Papazian’s elegant
arched overhangs. Six feet in span and made of the galvanized steel beams
used in Quonset huts, the pieces were lifted into place by crane after the
old roof was lopped off. In addition to giving the house a quirky face-lift,
the arches also achieve Papazian’s desired reorientation of the house and
open it up to the backyard – an effect heightened by a back wall of glass
instead of solid sheetrock.
The massive curves set the tone for inside, as well. Forget straight-lined
modern; everything from chair backs to faucets to the bird feeder is softly
rounded in this home. Walls slide and glide their way around the rooms,
arching to meet the ceiling rather than colliding at right angles. `Curved
shapes are comforting,’ says Lenzi. `Everything’s sort of wrapping around
you.’ Downstairs, in what now comprises the kitchen, living, office, and
dining areas, richly refinished wood floors and butcher block countertops,
as well as the addition of a Doug fir back deck, complete the feeling of
warm enclosure. For some contrast, punctuations of industrial ethos run
throughout, from a perforated steel screen in the dining room to metal bolts
and screws on ceiling beams and metal arches topping the two bedrooms and
bathroom upstairs. White paint, lots of natural light from added windows,
and few interior walls make the house live larger than its footprint.
The changes all aren’t about aesthetics, however. Threads of shared memories
are incorporated into the design: a bookcase core that contains their
collection of tomes on jazz, cooking, and architecture; a kitchen where
expansive countertops are used to roll out the same ravioli recipes that
Lenzi’s grandmother makes; and artwork by Papazian’s mother, Janet Gasson,
make the entire house is a true reflection of the family. The front door
handle was designed by one of Papazian’s architecture professors, and an
alcove in toddler Giovanna’s room is the same shape and size of a nook where
Papazian used to sleep as a child.
`With all these small houses here in Portland, there’s the ability to really
tailor-make a home in a way that’s very authentic and personality driven,’
says Papazian. `And that’s what we tried to do here: make a new kind of
architecture that’s both modern and improves people’s spirit and mental
state.’