The owners of this new custom home are a dynamic, young husband-and-wife professional couple who wanted a suburban lifestyle near the vibrancy of Brickell. For that they chose the historic neighborhood of The Roads and approached us with a clear vision of what to accomplish: a starter home where to grow a family and entertain relatives and friends in a minimalist setting, while preserving a grand tree in the backyard.

The arrangement of the space program starts with an intelligible sequence of access, where the spatial compression introduced at the recessed entrance porch continues in the Foyer and dissipates in the gallery Hall, as the Kitchen tucked to the side is unveiled and an expansive Grand Room introduced as the fusion of the Dining, Living, and Family areas. This visual expansion culminates in the double-height space above the latter, which draws the outdoors inside and is glimpsed at from the very entry door, as one walks in. The single-run stairway behind the Kitchen allows for a very efficient circulation, and for daylight to bounce in through the transom glass separating them, as it enters the staircase from its corner window and ricochets off its walls at different angles with the moving sun, complementing the softer glow of northerly light from the backyard. Together with the window by the Foyer, this guarantees the permanent provision of sunlight throughout the main spaces of the house during the day, with a playful succession of moods as the hours go by.

The physical envelope of the house derives from the Maison Dom-Ino concept of concrete slabs supported by thin columns closer to the edges, with a stairway providing access to each level on one side of the floor plan and unimpeded room space configuration. The definite form is a containment of pure cubic prisms corresponding to the assigned volume for each room and area in the house program, assorted per functional relationships, desired adjacencies, light exposures, preferred vistas, and impact on overall massing. This is particularly evident towards the back, where the Ground and Second Floor coalesce around two rows of three space prisms each: The Dining, Family, and Living areas merged in a single continuum on the former, and the Master Bedroom and vertical expansion of the Family on the latter, with the sixth prism left outside and given away as superfluous. The house transitions from the introverted, almost imposing front with its rational yet delicate play of light and shadow against the background of a very white canvas in the sun, to the extroverted openness of its rear façade where it is all glass, and the house can be unveiled at will to the controlled environment of the private backyard.