© John Horner
- Architects: Merge Architects
- Location: United States, Lexington, MA, USA
- Area: 1975.0 ft2
- Project Year: 2016
- Photographs: John Horner
- Principal In Charge: Elizabeth Whittaker
- Project Manager: Amit Oza
- Project Designer: Allison Austin
- Project Team: Jamie Pelletier, Anne-Sophie Divenyi, Duncan Scovil
- Structural Engineer: Evan Hankin
- Steel Fabricator: Ramos Iron Work
- General Contractor: Evergreen Group Company, Inc
© John Horner
From the architect. Grow Box is a 1975sf (185 m2) home in Lexington, MA, designed for an MIT University Professor, his wife, and their young son. The landscape surrounding the house is elaborately planted, with over 40 different varieties of Japanese maple trees painstakingly cultivated and maintained by the clients.
© John Horner
The extents of the existing gardens limited the footprint of the new house, and inspired an architecture that utilizes landscape to affect space that expands beyond the physical limits of the house. The resulting design is a compact volume penetrated by slot gardens and entry decks that both define space within the house, and erode the boundary between interior and exterior.
© John Horner
The slot recessed gardens are organized geometrically by a central courtyard garden that contains a single Himalayan birch tree. This garden, which will collect rain in the summer and snow in the winter, underlines one’s experience of the elements as the literal and metaphorical centerpiece of the home.
© John Horner
Floor Plan
© John Horner
Floor Plan
On the interior, each room is paired with at least one garden, the deep recessed rectangular proportions of which allow the clients to visually inhabit the garden while maintaining privacy from the neighboring houses and adjacent street.
© John Horner
On the exterior, the intriguing visual contrast between the crisp geometry of the house and the sinuous landscape is both enhanced and obfuscated by the tree-trunk hue of the weathering steel cladding. Large areas of glazing surrounding the slot gardens and floor-to-ceiling windows reflect the surrounding trees and plantings, further blurring the distinction between architecture and nature.
Section
Sig Nordal 