Washington DC is suddenly hip again. The swearing in of President Obama brought with it a swell of interest in younger professionals — including artists, architects and fresh-faced policy makers. But DC has always been a place of change. This is evident in their consistently evolving architecture. Whether it is converting century old factories into modern lofts, or a crumbling Victorian home into one of the city’s premier contemporary homes, DC is on the map — politically and architecturally. Blackburn Architects, P.C. designed the renovation to this modern DC home.

Blackburn Residence

From the Web site:

This 3-story addition to a 1916 Victorian single-family residence in Chevy Chase, DC includes a breakfast room, family room, master bedroom on the upper floors, and an in-law unit on the lower level.

Rappahannock County is a small region in the Washington DC area. The name is an Algonquian word that means, “river of quick, rising water.”

Unlike metropolitan DC, Rappahannock is a lush rural county with rolling hills and rushing rivers. Its proximity to the city and its tranquil country lifestyle make it an ideal location for an architectural experiment.

McInturff Architects took advantage of the opportunity and went to work plotting and constructing a modern Washington DC home in the center of this Virginia County.

The Rappahannock County House

Built on 300 acres in Rappahannock County, the house takes its inspiration from farm buildings and their assemblages, abstractly recalling local rural building traditions through color, form and organization. The linear form of the house gives each major room a view of the mountains in the distance.

Color is used inside and out to articulate the length of the building as three ochre pavilions with barn-red connectors. Grey-green shed-roofed volumes form wings defining a parking court on the approach side and a terrace on the view side.

Within, rooms are general in function and informal in use. A long room for music and gathering fills one wing, and a large table fits comfortably in the kitchen. The screened porch is also a room, identical to the seating area the kitchen, but screened and unheated. Bedrooms make up all of the second floor, and on top, a tower study provides a getaway from those gathered below.

Locally familiar materials, such as galvanized roofs and concrete block fireplaces, make it all feel at home in the local vernacular.

(Courtesy of McInturff Architects)