New Italian
This house is located in a close-in urban neighborhood in Houston, Texas for a young professional couple with two small children. They desired a new “Italian” house – a small Tuscan villa. The house is a very simple “box” with the standard family requirements: living, dining, family, breakfast, kitchen, playroom, master study and three bedrooms plus a mater suite.
The house has an open floor plan because of the use of the stair hall centrally suspended between the two-story open spaces at the core of the house. A hidden skylight floods the center of the house with light and the playroom has interior window which open onto the stair hall. A curved balcony connects the master suite with the mater study and mimics the curved end of the playroom. The concept of the interior spaces of the house continues the new Italian look. Stained wood cabinetry in high-use areas such as the kitchen complement the painted custom trim.
Set in a close-in neighborhood with many other new houses, this intricately detailed but simple structure modestly projects originality. Elegant landscaping, a central hall symmetry and a simple roofline anchor this home in its traditional neighborhood environment.
