Small & Sunny in Seattle, WA – Phinney Residence by PB Elemental

On the outside, the Phinney Residence, located in the Phinney Ridge neighborhood of Seattle, Washington, is a bunch of cubes with their volumes all funny, rising from the midst of an ocean of lush greenery. On the inside, it’s a vibrant, colorful single-family home, which employs unusual design solutions, toward achieving very creative effects. Its total usable surface is 2,510 square feet, all crammed on a relatively small lot. But those are just the facts and figures. Take in the home’s atmosphere and the vibe of its garden. You’ll forget all about size and practicality and allow yourself to revel in the tranquility and comfort. The home employs a clever program, which could revolutionize living systems for small, urban, residential structures. Literally, the home features a “reverse floor plan”, with the day area on the top and third level. Highlighted items, all of them handpicked by the current owners, include the lavish bamboo flooring and floral patterned wallpaper in the bedroom, the Gregg suspension pendant lights by Foscarini, hovering over the kitchen island, and the Castre Suspension pendant lights by Artemide over the dining table.

The home was designed by the creative folks over at Pb Elemental Architecture, while the garden was landscaped by Kim Rooney Inc.. Pb Elemental, founded in 2004 in Seattle, actually specializes in “urban infill housing”, which aims “to challenge the predominant traditional Pacific Northwest aesthetic, to provide homes with spaces sized appropriately to the way people are living and reject the idea that bigger is always better and to establish that clean, modern design can be achieved for all budgets.” This philosophy, part functional, part ecologically-minded, perfectly matched the goals of Aseem and Elke, an Adobe research scientist and his wife, who just wanted a pretty, efficient house, tailored to their needs and representative of their personalities. Completed in April 2011, the home has been inhabited by the pair for five months now. Their journey to build as efficient a lifestyle as possible is still ongoing, and their blog, which charters this journey, proves that they are still as enthusiastic as when they first set out.

(Source: PBElemental.com)