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Skylight at the top of the new stair tower. The 21st-Century Cabin, with the new entry
and stair tower at left.
Photos © Julia Heine/McInturff Architects

plan scheme, with only one piece of furniture on the first floor—a
small, movable table that the family uses for eating while seated
on the floor. Pocket doors on the second floor can be closed off at
night to create separate bedrooms. As with the other two projects
reviewed here, the interior employs a light-friendly combination of
white walls and blond wood flooring with some darker accent
materials in the kitchen and the stairway.
The cabin’s drab original exterior was changed to a combination
of white stucco and black asphalt shingles, creating a contrasting
color scheme somewhat like that of the Becherer House, but on a
much more compact scale, with only a single gabled volume. The
Kitchen and living area.
addition encloses a new entry, closets, and a spiral stairway (with a
circular skylight on top) that replaces a ladder to the second floor.
Washingtonian Award A bridge links the new stairway to the upper-level room, so that
walking from certain first-floor spaces to the loft area can involve
21st-Century Cabin crossing the length of the small house twice, increasing the residence’s
Highland, MD apparent interior volume.
In its rural setting, the new cylindrical volume can be taken as
McInturff Architects a reference to a grain silo. But with its pure-white stucco exterior,
General Contractor: Timber Ridge Builders this new part of the house, combined with the original rectangular
wing, also brings to mind classic early European modernist houses
such as the Villa Savoye, near Paris, designed by Le Corbusier and
The 21st-Century Cabin, designed by McInturff Architects, takes
Pierre Jeanneret.
the pure forms of the Becherer House and reduces them further to
Small jewels are usually found in mines. But occasionally, as
create a 1,200-square-foot, two-bedroom, gabled residence for an
with the 21st-Century Cabin, they can be found in open fields.
aerospace engineer, a cellist, and their small child. Located in
Highland, Maryland, the project renovated and added to a modest
This project was previously covered in the Summer 2017 issue
gable-roofed house that was not much more than a shack.
of ARCHITECTUREDC.
The clients asked for a design to support their minimalist
lifestyle. Accordingly, the house as renovated employs an open-

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