Architectural Record 2015-04

74
ARCHITECTURAL RECORD APRIL 2015 BUILDING TYPE STUDY RECORD HOUSES
The Lightbox | Point Roberts, Washington
Bohlin Cywinski Jackson
)25(67
5(75($7
Designed for an architectural
photographer, a house with
an innovative spirit delivers
modernism on a budget.
BY LAURA RASKIN
PHOTOGRAPHY BY NIC LEHOUX
7o drive to Point Roberts, Washington, you have
to cross the United States–Canada border twice,
making a U-turn above the 49th parallel: its
peninsula juts into the water south of Vancouver,
separated from the rest of the United States by the
Strait of Georgia.
On the southeastern tip of the exclave, Bohlin
Cywinski Jackson (BCJ)—known for its tectonic residences
whose clarity of form and materials often have ample budgets
—has designed what could be thought of as a contemporary
Case Study house, built for $210 per square foot. The client
was the firm’s longtime collaborator, architectural photographer
Nic Lehoux, who shares the residence with
his partner and their toddler daughter. The rectangular,
charcoal-colored two-story wood house is sited in an existing
clearing in a dense old-growth forest. A combination of a
balloon frame structure and platform structure made of
off-the-shelf dimensional lumber, it is defined by two
volumes that appear “zipped” together. Internally, they are
divided by a hallway running east–west. BCJ principal Robert
Miller also designed a ramp that will extend this datum line
outside and guide visitors from the road to the house. The
walkway and a deck are under construction.
“It’s been a lifelong interest to generate modernism on a
budget,” says Miller, whose childhood bookshelves were filled
with his father’s issues of Mechanix Illustrated and Popular
Mechanics. “I think I memorized every page. When an opportunity
like Nic’s comes along, it takes me back to those deepseated
interests.” For Lehoux’s house, Miller concentrated on
eliminating anything unnecessary, assembling without cutting
and fabricating, and creating a “special moment in space
that rivals a child’s treehouse or a fort,” he says.
The southern volume is a glass box, interspersed with
economical fiber-cement panels for energy savings and to
maintain privacy. In it, Miller stacked bedrooms and private
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