Jackson Avenue House
Rutherford, New Jersey
Completed 2019
Design Team
Brian Messana, Toby O’Rorke, Viktor Nassli
Collaborators
Mechanical Engineer: M.A. Rubiano
Lighting Designer: Zerolux
This project illustrates our fundamental belief that the modernist impulse in architecture operates not as an erasure of history but as a complement to it—the new and the old working in tandem to produce a dynamic tension that ennobles both. After acquiring a modestly scaled Colonial-style house with plenty of charm, our clients quickly realized that they needed more room for their growing family. Rather than attempting to pump up the scale of the original house by replicating its architectural language, we designed an addition with its own distinct character and identity, separated from the main house but connected via a floating glass bridge that physically and conceptually spans the past and present. The addition—a boxy, orthogonal volume that contains the primary bedroom suite and a garage below—is clad in cedar, a material we also used to define the small expansion of the kitchen and dining zone on the first floor of the original house. The repetition of the cedar siding cements the bond between the two structures, even as the horizontal slot windows we installed in the expanded portion of the kitchen and dining room underscore the shift from old to new.
Although the exterior of the original house remains largely intact, we gutted the interior to provide a more open, generous space conducive to family gathering. On the ground floor, we converted four cramped rooms into a single, multifunctional great room that is now the center of family life. On the upper floor, we enlarged the one bathroom that serves the three renovated children’s bedrooms. The outdoor area beneath the glass bridge functions as a deck for entertaining, a space conceived specifically for coming together, much like the great room. More than a mere architectural conceit, the house’s alternating gestures of connection and separation acknowledge and honor the complexities of modern family dynamics.
Photographs by Costas Picadas
Press
2023
2021
Fox, Meg. “Dividing the Gap.” Design New Jersey (June/July 2021).
2019
Awards
2022
Winner in the category: Interior Design, House Residential. DNA Paris Design Awards
2021
Honoree in the category: Small House. Interior Design Magazine’s Best Of Year
Award of Merit. Society of American Registered Architects, New York City Council
Award of Honor. Society of American Registered Architects, National Design Awards