Scott Allen is the Principal Designer for this project, which was executed during Scott’s tenure as a named Principal at Olson Sundberg Kundig Allen (OSKA) Architects.

Interior design by OSKA.

Photography by Tim Bies.

Scott Allen is the Principal Designer for this project, which was initiated during Scott’s tenure as a named Principal at Olson Sundberg Kundig Allen (OSKA) Architects and completed by Scott Allen Architecture.

Interior design by Nichole Jacobson Interior Design.

Aaron Leitz Photography

Scott played key roles in the development of Tacoma’s Union Station District: first, from 1992 to its completion in 1996, as the Associate Architect for the Washington State History Museum (with Moore/Andersson Architects of Austin, Texas); and, from 1998 to its completion in 2002 as the Executive Architect for the Tacoma Art Museum (with Antione Predock Architect of Albuquerque, New Mexico). Scott will speak about the widely divergent architectural responses to the historic fabric explored in these two major works, and the range of successful strategies cities can take in developing an authentic sense of civic space.

More information on the event can be found on the organization’s website, www.ReTacoma.com

Shek O Residence, Hong Kong. “Rooted in Tradition”, Architectural Digest, August 2009, pps. 86-91. Architecture and Interior Design by Olson Sundberg Kundig Allen. Text by Therese Bissell. Photography by Benjamin Benschneider. Click on images above for larger view.

 Artist’s Statement

Growing up in eastern Washington gave me a deeply-branded visual memory that continues to be a strong source of imagery for my work.  There is both clarity and mystery in that geography, with its seemingly endless spaces, sparse vegetation and often abrupt transitions from one geologic element to another.  Light fills and illuminates these spaces as it plays off the land in endless variation.

Peoples’ marks on these landscapes are especially obvious.  Roads, buildings, and fields form strong counterpoints to the natural landscape.  The eye is drawn to these kinds of elements, whether it is the verticality of grain elevators set against a flat field, a straight road or fence running through the land’s undulations, or an abandoned building.   These marks can also suggest a history or narrative, and allow for individual interpretation in the mind of the viewer.

As experiences, these landscapes can evoke feelings of loneliness and apprehension, as well as peaceful feelings of solitude and freedom, and it is within those emotions, and in their inherent contradictions, that the work is set. 

 Please contact me about other available work, commissioned work, and future exhibits.

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Selected work for upcoming August 2011 exhibit at Smith Exhibits, Roslyn, WA. 101 North 2nd Street, Rolsyn WA 98941, tel. 509-674-8805 or 509-649-3249. Click on images above for larger views.

“Walk the Back Road Home:  Landscapes by Scott Allen 1997 — 2011″ at Robert Graves Gallery, Wenatchee Valley College, Wenatchee, WA, April 4th through May 5th, 2011.  Opening Reception Thursday April 7th.  Gallery is located in Sexton Hall on the campus of Wenatchee Valley College, 1300 5th Street, Wenatchee Washington, tel. 509-682-6776, website robertgravesgallery@wvc.edu  Click  on images above for larger views.

“Play of Light” Exhibition, December 3-29, 2010. Bainbridge Arts and Crafts, 151 Winslow Way East, Bainbridge Island Washington, tel. 206-842-3132
Click on any image above to view work.

Descending the main stairs, one finds a series of oversized pocket doors that open to create a seamless transition to an outdoor entertainment area and the lakefront lawn. This level also houses a catering kitchen, home theater, and guest rooms. The owner’s suite occupies the entire upper level and includes a library, piano room, master suite, spa and sundeck. A key feature of the central space is a three-story vitrine for the display of the owners’ extensive collection of art glass.

Exterior materials were selected for their durability and natural warmth, including colored precast concrete, cedar, copper, and limestone. A geothermal heat source and operable passive ventilation are examples of sustainable strategies used in this house.

This project began at Olson Sundberg Kundig Allen and was completed by Scott Allen Architecture. Scott Allen, primary designer. Interiors by OSKA. Dining table, coffee table and credenza designs by Scott Allen.

Scott Allen, Principal Designer. Project initiated by Olson Sundberg Kundig Allen Architects (OSKA) and completed by Scott Allen Architecture.

Click on any image above to view work.

A Question of Context

Contemporary Solutions for an Olympic Peninsula Home

Renovation Architecture and Interior Design by Olson Sundberg Kundig Allen Landscape Architecture by Allworth Nussbaum/Text by Therese Bissel/Photography by Erhard Pfeiffer

Of the now double-height entrance, Allen says, "The point of the aperture is to feel as little interruption as possible going from outdoors to indoors," and idea found throughout the house.

In the sometimes kaleidoscopic process of executing a residential addition, there comes that moment of truth: Would it, ultimately, make more sense to begin all over with a completely new structure than to proceed with a composite? It’s “the hinge point/’ as architect Scott Allen describes it, “when you have to balance the embodied energy and capital costs of the original building with the overlay of invested time and effort in the current scheme-when you’re sort of halfway across the river.”

His remodel of and addition to a five-year-old Port Ludlow, Washington, house fell subject to such a review–and more than once, as deficiencies were discovered (it was out of plumb and out of square; it was not as solidly built as it appeared–even the stucco wainscot crumbled when lightly tapped). “There were times when we wondered if we should just tear the whole thing down and start from scratch,” confirms Allen, a principal of Seattle-based Olson Sundberg Kundig Allen. But the virtues-a good indoor-outdoor relationship, a logical spatial organization, a nicely volumetric main living area, a well-located kitchen-trumped the ills. And, perhaps most important, Allen remained committed to his initial appraisal of the house as “a place we could hang some pretty interesting new architecture on.”

The great room

The resolution-now a contemporary retreat-is a creaseless incorporation of the existing into the freshly conceived. Allen’s group did a comprehensive reinforcing and cosmetic makeover of the original structure while growing the square footage by approximately 60 percent to include the kinds of spaces and amenities desirable to a family with two teenage sons. The key determinant in virtually every aspect of the remodel was the setting. The house would fuse with its Olympic Peninsula site, a wooded five-acre bluff overlooking Admiralty Inlet, in ways not possible in its previous incarnation.

Approached from a long, sylvan driveway (“old nurse logs and fallen cedars–Pacific Northwest Tolkienesque,” suggests Allen), the entrance is marked by a steel-and-diffused-glass canopy, a form repeated on the opposite, water side of the house; the paving, too, is consistent from front to back, leading the eye all the way through and reinforcing the basic outside-inside-out-again architectural expression. Allen capitalized on the double-height volume just inside the front door by installing a steel armature that creates the seemingly floating “Zen space,” where a large window.contributes southern light (a premium on the north-facing waterfront) to the circulation node below. There, the overhead piece gives the entrance “a more human scale,” notes Allen, who says he likes “bringing people in low.”

Allen and interior designer Charlie Fairchild, also of Olson Sundberg Kundig Allen, slected a palette that evokes the surrounding landscape–and is reminiscent of classic beach houses. Lounge chair and barstool from A. Rudin. Sofa fabric, Rogers & Goffigon. Tufenkian carpet.

To the immediate right are the public spaces (living, dining, kitchen); past the corridor to the left is the private realm–day room and two bedrooms.The architect performed a modified version of what as a young carpenter in the 1970s he learned as a “planectomy” (cutting a roof in half and lifting it to make a second level). He raised the roof that adjoins the master suite and added an upper-level day/guest room and bath, as well as the hallway to the Zen space. To allow, on the other end of the building, for the spacious teen-friendly recreation room and the service areas-and’, above, the media room–he relocated the garage in one piece rather than tearing it down. “Our big green move,” he says, “is that the whole house·was recycled.”

Allen relied on recycled mountain ash for the floors and locally sourced Douglas fir for the ceiling beams and battens, "natural materials," he observes, "used in a natural way. It's a simple idea by pretty hard to pull off." The dining table, designed by his firm, is also of Douglas fir.

The materials and colors-interior and exterior (stained cedar in a serious upgrade of the old siding, new metal roofs and window trim)-were selected for their resonance with the dual-ecology site. At one point, Allen gathered rocks, shells and driftwood from the beach and bark from the woods, laying the weathered pieces side by side as inspiration for the muted, richly contextual palette. The locally sourced Douglas fir ceiling beams and battens and the casework (particularly prominent in the kitchen and the master suite) effect, together with the reclaimed-ash floor, a warm wood enclosure in the main living area. The generous use of wood (including the Olson Sundberg Kundig Allen-designed dining and sofa tables made of a single slab of Douglas fir, from which there was enough left over for a table for the game room) and the concrete-and-steel fireplace tie the living spaces in tone and texture to the outdoors, a connection heightened by oversize windows and glass doors.

Landscaping was integral to the holistic makeover, as there existed only an ornamental garden with no relationship to the woodlands. Randy Allworth, of the Seattle landscape architecture firm Allworth Nussbaum, conceived a natural progression from the outlying dense trees to the bluff. Leaving the forest as found, Allworth created a meadow with plantings suited to the cool, maritime climate, employing native grasses and ground covers as well as vine maples, huckleberry and other indigenous vegetation. His office designed the hardscape-precast-concrete-paved entrance path, private patios off the main-floor bedrooms, two terraces (the central one formerly a piecemeal grouping of wood platforms) and an upper deck-so that he “touched,” he says, “every square inch of property adjacent to the house.”

Allen sought to give his clients "a retreat–a place to unwind and recharge their batteries and create memories," he explains. Landscape architect Randy Allworth chose mostly native plants, which harmonized with Allen's vision for the house. Outdoor dinning table and chairs, Sutherland.

In discussing his clients’ expectations for the project, Allen speaks in broad terms. “It’s always situational,” he explains. “People start where they start. Our job is to pull the dreams out of their psyches and get them On paper. They have a mental inventory of domestic architecture-a rich attic of ideas and memories that pushes them forward. This is true for second homes even more so than for primary residences: that rich family memory of the place on the lake or in the forest.”

What the residence’s owners didn’t want-a point on which their architect was in complete agreement-was the grand lodge in the woods. “There’s a whole different psychology to that kind of building,” Allen says. “This house needed to work for the present and be commodious enough so that it could easily become their primary residence at some later point.” It also had to be a viable, aesthetically reasoned cohesion of old and new elements that would prove, indubitably, to merit the endeavor.