This project represents the potential to totally transform a difficult urban condition into a functional and beautiful living space. First to go – thousands of feet of asphalt that pooled to a foot deep after heavy rains and drained directly onto the nearby bike path. The overwhelming and hostile sea of pavement became a series of seamlessly interconnected garden spaces and a multi-use structure that is part carport and part pavilion. Behind the scenes, the overhaul resolves drainage issues in ways that also enhance aesthetics and privacy. The resulting combination of spaces blends landscape and architecture along with the concepts of interior and exterior, outside and inside, successfully reimagining a problematic ‘back-of-house’ situation into the “best room of the house.”
Outside | In is located at a private residence in Somerville, Massachusetts. The backyard abuts a local bike path, and presented a challenge to create a lush, intimate-feeling space for relaxation and entertaining in a dense urban setting. This project successfully extended the home’s living space beyond the confines of the interior and created a set of vibrant outdoor rooms. The homeowners envisioned an urban oasis carved from their paved backyard. They dreamt of smooth rocks under their feet, quiet moments, the sounds of running water and birdsong, and we delivered.
Landscape architecture is a profession which rewards the generalist, and this project incorporated many disparate systems into elegant design elements: sitework, drainage, carpentry, metal work, horticulture, lighting, stonework, and a garden-integrated building.
As a design + build company, we guided the project from concept to installation to ensure continuity between the original design vision and finished project, and realize the seamless interplay of landscape and architecture dreamed up and developed in close collaboration with the Owner. Working closely with the client, our firm produced documents for design, planting, drainage, lighting, and permitting. During construction, we oversaw subcontractors for carpentry, building, and electrical work, while our in-house team managed sitework, stonework, lighting, planting, and irrigation.
The material aesthetic of Outside | In is a seamless and tasteful combination of very classic, traditional Colonial New England influence and sleek modern utility. What began as a simple open-air carport evolved into an enclosed structure, suitable for both parking and dinner parties, with sliding barn doors, clerestory windows, and gabion walls filled with site-found stones. Salt-and-pepper granite steps and a regularly spaced grid of square bluestone paving, dry-stacked New England fieldstone walls housed within gabion steel mesh, and a horizontal shadowbox fence of rough spruce all take classic local materials and present them in a creative way that complements the Modern design of the carport structure. A Corten steel retaining wall nods to the coastal New England city’s industrial past, and provides a deep contrast with the cool granite and bluestone paving and the dark detailing of the carport structure. Black metal window frames, multiple sliding garage doors, and a trough-style water feature built into the deck reinforce the pervasive post-industrial theme.
This project features a native-dominant design that combines multiple seasons of beauty with function- attracting pollinators and providing crucial off-season forage. These plants also provide valuable habitat for invertebrates and a variety of berries, the presence of which encourage and in fact guarantee the presence of nesting songbirds in the spring and throughout the year. There is also a focus on inclusion of interesting bark (brightly colored or exfoliating) and a variety of foliage textures. Plant varieties with predominantly white blooms were chosen to create a calming and soft border. Species such as Amelanchier canadensis, Aronia melanocarpa, Clethra alnifolia and Cornus sericea were chosen for their pleasing forms as well as their ability to thrive in and manage wet soils, to increase on-site infiltration, protect the back yard from urban noise pollution, and to provide ecological value.
Outside | In stands out as an example of how well-executed landscape architecture spans a myriad of different disciplines. The ability to totally transform a poorly functioning and uninviting urban condition into a space which has aesthetic, ecological and infrastructural value, while also creating a harmonious marriage of indoor and outdoor spaces and use patterns, is unique to the field and on full display in the concept and execution of this project.
• All landscape architecture offices involved in the design of landscape:
Gilmore Landscape Architecture
• Architecture offices involved in the design:
Architect – Sarah Walker
• Other credits:
Carport – Harper Elm custom homebuilders
