How They Pulled It Off: A Built-in Tiled Bench That Honors the View
In Oakland, design studio Kalos Eidos creates structure in a tight living room with a custom seating solution.
In Oakland, design studio Kalos Eidos creates structure in a tight living room with a custom seating solution.
Welcome to How They Pulled It Off, where we take a close look at one particularly challenging aspect of a home design and get the nitty-gritty details about how it became a reality.
Northern California’s Bay Area is known for its resplendent natural beauty. In a home in Oakland, New York-based design studio Kalos Eidos paid tribute to the characteristics of that ecosystem, with a nature-inspired palette and a layout designed to encourage flow between interior and exterior. "Our approach to the renovation was really geared towards having an emphasis on the main living spaces, extending them to the outside, and really seeing that part of the property as an underutilized asset when they purchased the home," Kalos Eidos founder Ryan Brooke Thomas explains.
At 1,400 square feet, the three bedroom, two bathroom home’s spaces are each relatively tight, so Thomas decided to utilize the 2,900 square feet of exterior space by creating intentional distinct areas to allow for a much roomier living environment. The living space already had large windows and a fireplace, so the studio’s work was in figuring out how to fully honor those details in their new design.
A view into the open living space, where the large windows allow for abundant natural light.
Photo: Mariko Reed
The tiled bench extends in front of the fireplace and down toward the entryway, creating a satisfying tie between the multiple different distinct areas of the open living space.
Photo: Mariko Reed
"Once we kind of sorted through the kitchen and the dining and what we had decided on as the best kind of open plan in terms of where the partitions would go, what remained for quote unquote ‘living’ was still a pretty tight footprint," Thomas explains. "Whatever solution needed to both complete the living area floor plan in a way and participate in that functionally, while also helping to shape and frame up the window and the hearth." The team landed on a terracotta bench that extends from the back of the house to the front entryway.
The portion of the bench that’s closer to the entryway has cubbies that were originally designed to store firewood, but now the homeowners use them to store baby toys, adding yet more flexibility.
Photo: Mariko Reed
See the full story on Dwell.com: How They Pulled It Off: A Built-in Tiled Bench That Honors the View
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