The new cottage designed by Bonin Architects & Associates for clients Peter and Chasity fits right in with their Victorian neighborhood of Blodgett Landing, Newbury, NH. New Hampshire Home magazine featured this open concept home in its July 2012 issue.
An excerpt of the article “Building a Better Cottage” by Clare Kittredge:
CLIMBING ART
Inside, the home’s artery is the beautiful winding, open staircase that’s visible from one end of the house to the other.
“It’s not your typical enclosed stair because the house is narrow and there’s so much travel between the floors,” Architect Jeremy Bonin explains. “It didn’t make sense not to celebrate the fact that it’s a tall, narrow home. Since they will use it so often, it needed to be a design focal point.”
Coiling through the home, the stairs benefit from windows on two sides for the entire height of the house. This means the look of the staircase changes throughout the day as the sun hits in from different angles.
“The stairs are kind of floating in the space,” Chasity says. “It’s like a work of art.”
But it’s not a delicate work of art. With many children running up and down at one time, the staircase takes a lot of beating. “If the kids have their friends over, sometimes they can have fifteen kids running up and down the stairs,” Chasity notes.
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