Project: Chickadee Residence
Architects: Surround Architecture
Location: Boulder, Colorado, USA
Area: 4,720 sf
Photographs by: Jensen Walker
Chickadee Residence by Surround Architecture
The Chickadee Residence is a modern family home with a design inspired by the historic American farmhouse. It was designed by Surround Architecture and is situated at the base of the Rocky Mountain Foothills in Boulder, Colorado.
Its farmhouse origins are easy to spot in the exterior but also as soon as you step inside with the oak floors, steel beams and wooden furniture.
Located in West Boulder, tucked into the base of the foothills, the site was among a handful of properties that were originally settled at the turn of the century as small residential farms with water rights bound to each property. With a water source fed from high in the Rocky Mountains, the neighborhood is dense with mature trees, apple orchards, and mountain wildlife.
Strategically organized to utilize as much of the one-acre site as possible and responding to the long driveway access condition, vehicular access is limited on the site as the garage sits forward to cede the majority of the wooded lot to the home itself. An elevated glassy breezeway connects the two structures, allowing the historic ditch to flow beneath while providing a unique experiential threshold to the home beyond.
The formal configuration of Chickadee is described by simple, geometric, and additive agrarian forms which orient to the front and back yards with two outdoor patio spaces intended to provide sun and shade as desired. The home flows to these exterior living spaces in all directions, maximizing the connection to the outdoors with the use of lift slide, bi-fold, and Dutch doors. The upper level layout is clean and simple, with a common loft area between the owner’s suite and kids’ bedrooms. An exterior palette of limestone masonry and rainscreen applications of steel paneling and cedar siding is punctuated by structural steel components.
The interiors concept is envisioned as bright, simple, and functional family space described by natural materials and glass that find their way from the exterior to within. Wide-plank French oak floors, architectural concrete, limestone masonry, blackened steel beams, finished timbers, and painted or stained T&G all reinforce how these materials find their way from the exterior to the space within.
