Residential Walk-Through

Indoors + Out

Tucson, Arizona

Rick McLain and Page Repp
Repp Design + Construction, Tucson, Arizona

BY NORA BURBA TRULSSON

PHOTOGRAPHY BY LIAM FREDERICK

An airy painting studio was part of a simple addition to an older Tucson residence. Materials include steel, sandblasted block and concrete flooring.

Residential additions can be tricky. There's always that instinct to make the new sections "blend" with the original house. And often, inexplicably, projects become clouded with moved walls, added stories or reoriented floorplans.

Architectural designers Rick McLain and Page Repp avoided those "additional" pitfalls with a recent Tucson project that expanded a family's living space — and changed the way they use their home.

The clients, a couple with two young children, were feeling the space squeeze in their 1950s ranch-style brick home. But they liked the historic Sam Hughes neighborhood and its proximity to both downtown and the University of Arizona. They also loved their home and its generously proportioned desert garden. With a wish list that included an outdoor living space, a painting studio and workshop area — plus a tight budget — the couple asked McLain and Repp for ideas.

An 80-foot trough in the addition's roofline drains into a cistern used to water the landscape.

"We decided that the easiest thing to do was to leave the existing house intact," says McLain, "and to create a separate new piece that lightly hangs on to the back of the old house." The addition, points out McLain, was also intended to connect the homeowners to their garden, drawing them out from the main house.

With that in mind, they created an 80-foot-long garden porch that runs the length of the back of the house, accessible from the living room, kitchen and master bedroom. Set perpendicularly from the porch is a walkway that connects the porch to a new storage area, breezeway workshop and a painting studio. The new indoor/outdoor spaces add about 1,220 square feet to the house.

The addition is decidedly modernist, yet its minimalistic lines are not a jarring juxtaposition to the more rustic style of the old desert ranch house. The materials were chosen for their simplicity and economy, such as sandblasted concrete block for walls, smooth concrete for the flooring and outdoor paving, and, for the painting studio, aluminum-framed glass walls and sliding doors, plus Baltic birch plywood for the ceiling. The garden porch is sheltered with a steel canopy that will patina as it is exposed to the elements. A metal bench in the breezeway workshop and recessed shelves near the storage area provide spots for projects and potted plants.

A new porch runs the length of the back of the house, creating sheltered outdoor living spaces.

McLain and Repp added touches to the addition that celebrate the homeowners' love of gardening. "We inserted the addition around the existing, mature landscape," McLain says. "The canopy roof is angled toward an 80-foot trough that collects rainwater into a cistern for watering the plants." The design also includes a slot in an exterior wall extending from the painting studio that will be planted with vines, and the walkway leading from the porch is made up of concrete squares, interspersed with slots, that McLain says "allow the desert floor to sneak in and out."

The completed project has worked well for the homeowners. The generously sized porch has created an outdoor living and dining area for the family, while the painting studio and workshop space have taken projects out from the hubbub of the main house into a quieter retreat.

And, lest things get too quiet, McLain points out what the homeowners have no doubt already discovered. "The porch, the studio and the breezeway are great places for parties."

Architectural design and building: Repp Design + Construction, Tucson, AZ; (520) 791-7035 or www.repp-inc.com.

Structural steel engineering: Kaiser Engineering, Tucson, AZ; (520) 742-0773.

Steel work: Graphic Iron, Tucson, AZ; (520) 622-6382.

Concrete: Luciano Concrete, Tucson, AZ; (520) 405-9535.

Masonry: Page Repp, Sr., Tucson, AZ; (520) 907-5951.