Home Theater
Pb Elemental built a house for two Queen Anne actors to play in. But will there be drama with the neighbors?
When Sam Lai told me he met his wife while they were UW theater students, I suddenly got it. The way the facade of their house, an enormous cedar-slat wall, tilts upward, garage-door style, but has the effect of a stage curtain—exposing the entire main living area: deck in front, then sitting and dining spaces, and kitchen at the back. The way LEDs wash the house in the colors of set lighting gels—violet, vermilion, electric blue. Now I see that the old-fashioned upright piano (which frankly clashes with the stark concrete floors, the gas-jet fireplace) is not meant to match; it’s here in case someone decides to put on a show. The house may be 5 Star Built Green certified, and it may be (in a neighborhood of old bungalows) an ultramodern statement; but above all it is adaptable, kinetic, made to be played in—and played with.
“The first things Sam talked about were not: I need to have three bedrooms and a great room,” says Mark Haizlip, of mavericky Seattle architecture firm Pb Elemental. “He talked about the project having drama.” Sam bought the narrow Queen Anne infill lot two years ago, planning to construct a home for himself, his wife Angie—a novelist and playwright—and their now two-year-old son Manny. (Twin daughters Elena and Gloria were born in July.) A real-estate appraiser and developer, Sam had already purchased six houses around Seattle, spiffing them up then selling them or renting them out. “Working on these construction rehab projects, I always wished I could start from scratch,” says Sam. “Do something more dynamic and push the limits in terms of efficiency.” The couple often hosts parties and intimate readings with theater friends, so he also wanted to create an open floor plan downstairs that would double as an event venue.
To find the architects to build it, he didn’t have to look far. The Lai property is just one street over from Queen Anne Avenue, address of Pb Elemental’s Sterling Residence, a boxy, cream-colored structure that the firm erected backwards: The windowless rear wall faces the street, the main entrance is hidden around back. To say the Sterling Residence pushes boundaries is an understatement. “My father calls it an abortion clinic,” one neighbor told The Stranger last March. But Dave Biddle, a Pb Elemental cofounder, is quick to remind me that Sterling was honored by the Seattle chapter of the American Institute of Architects for its cutting-edge and sustainable design; he largely dismisses neighbors’ criticism. “I think deep down they realize we’re doing a better service to their homes by not just pretending that the house was built 100 years ago,” says Biddle.
Published: February 2009