At a Young Family’s Woodsy Haven, a Soaring Living Space Anchors the Home

A sidelong nod to the midcentury box gives a Virginia residence with a striking wall of windows its name.

Nov 19, 2020 - 01:17

At a Young Family’s Woodsy Haven, a Soaring Living Space Anchors the Home

A sidelong nod to the midcentury box gives a Virginia residence with a striking wall of windows its name.

Eunnice Eun and Patrick Kim had talked about building a new home for nearly as long as they’d been married. But after almost two decades of envisioning, plotting, and thumbing through nerdy architecture magazines, they were prompted to turn their long-nursed dreams into reality by a serendipitous excursion—and a minor calamity.

Eunnice Eun stands in the double-height living area of the McLean, Virginia, home she shares with her husband, Patrick Kim, and their two children. The expanses of glass echo and update the large windows of the 1961 house they demolished to build this one.

Photo: Eli Meir Kaplan

It began with a drive through their hometown of McLean, Virginia. As they wound through one of the many heavily wooded neighborhoods in the Washington, D.C., suburb, they spotted a shiny rectilinear house in a quiet pocket of town. "Eunnice was like, ‘Stop the car! Stop the car!’ " Patrick recalls. Though the residence had a boxy form, it also had walls of glass that allowed the forest views to penetrate, softening it and creating a fluid connection between the living spaces and the surrounding landscape. The couple tracked down the architects—Eric Höweler and Meejin Yoon of Boston-based Höweler + Yoon—and sent them an email: "We saw your house. We love it. It’s so full of ideas and we’d like to talk sometime."