CONSTANCE
VALE HOUSE

Two long bars slide past one another to frame a breezeway down the middle, threading from the front porch, through the dining room, and out to the backyard. An interior hall crossing east to west connects the social spaces and bridges the two wings. The result is a simple form built from a more complicated set of relationships, open to many ways of living. These relationships draw on the nearby Pulitzer Arts Foundation by Tadao Ando and on two historic St. Louis house types: the dogtrot, with its central breezeway, and the flounder house, with its split, attenuated figure.

The dining room sits inside the breezeway and can be opened for entertaining and cross-ventilation. The front porch and back terrace extend the social spaces into two outdoor rooms, so that in warm weather the house effectively doubles in size, enhanced by the living room fireplace echoing a fire table on the back porch. Clerestory windows above the dining room wash the taller adjacent spaces in daylight while keeping the interior private from close neighbors. Generous corner windows in the living room and primary bedroom turn inward toward the center of the home and backyard, with deep ledges that double as reading nooks and storage.

Each bedroom has its own entry, making the space flexible as a bedroom, guest room, or office. Outside, light and shadow move across the sloped facade panels, echoing the rhythm of brick or lap siding enlarged to an architectural scale. The fiber cement rainscreen aligns to vertical channels, turning the two-foot spacing of the wood-frame structure into a large drawing that sets the placement of every window and panel. Inside, bamboo in the social spaces and terrazzo in the bathrooms create an interior that reads as clean and contemporary while remaining durable and low maintenance.

A covered porch and deep window surrounds shade the south facade, while windows are most abundant on the north to reduce heat gain. Daylight follows the rhythm of the day with morning sun in the kitchen and no direct light in the primary bedroom until late afternoon. At night, cove lighting gives the rooms the glow of a Hopper interior.