A careful remodel of a Seattle house by architect Milton Stricker celebrates life in the trees

written by Melissa Dalton | photography by Rafael Soldi

Milton Stricker was never one for the mainstream. So say historians, who’ve deemed the architect an outsider for much of his career. It’s a label that Stricker, who dropped out of college on the eve of his graduation to join the Frank Lloyd Wright fellowship in 1951, probably wouldn’t have minded much. What we know with more certainty, is that Stricker was a staunch believer in organic architecture as Wright defined it. “That was the true religion,” said Stricker’s son after Stricker’s 2008 passing, after four decades of designing numerous houses and churches across Seattle. “It gave him a direction and a cause and a philosophy.”

One such house was Stricker’s own, located in the Mount Baker neighborhood. Built in 1991 on a sloped and wooded lot, sharp decks at every level angle out amid the trees, while a dramatically canted roof appears to hover over the front door. Clocking all the angles from the sidewalk, you’d never know that the primary footprint is actually a perfect square, just rotated away from the street.

Once inside, the overall effect captures the very heart of organic architecture principles—to live in harmony and balance with nature—as so many of the windows on each of the three floors frame the surrounding trees and one giant big-leaf maple in particular, which even shows up on Milton Stricker’s original plans. “Every floor aligns with a different level of the tree,” said architect Barbara Busetti. “It’s a massive tree, so as you move from floor to floor, up and down in the house, you are experiencing different aspects of the tree, from trunk to branches.”

The most-recent owners are avid bird watchers, so getting up close to the tree canopy—the top deck is like a “bird sanctuary,” said Busetti—was a primary selling point. But as passionate cooks, they also needed a better kitchen. Case in point: A 24-inch-wide doorway choked the circulation into the room, and the available space was not conducive to both of them—he’s a cook and she’s a baker—working side-by-side. “They spend a lot of time together in the kitchen, and a lot of time with friends and family in the kitchen,” said Busetti, who counts herself as one of those friends who’ve joined their dinner parties over the years. “The kitchen is the heart of their social life.”

To help her friends with a gentle remodel of Milton Stricker’s former home, Busetti, a partner at Seattle firm Allied8, teamed up with Anne Viggiano and Suzanne Scott, both of Color & Design Studio, and Dahlstrom Builders. The team tackled not just the kitchen, but two bathrooms, a laundry room, mechanical systems and storage throughout, including a custom headboard in the primary bedroom and custom lighting. Everyone’s goal was to tread lightly. “We all agreed very easily that we were looking to upgrade the functionality, but not erase the history,” said Busetti.

In the kitchen, the original layout was tight, made especially so by an angled peninsula that followed the lines of a triangular ceiling soffit above it. “There were so many angles, it was not really made to be a chef’s kitchen,” said Viggiano, principal designer at Color & Design Studio. “It was a challenge because we couldn’t ignore the diagonals of the house, but wanted to lessen the impact of them.” That was done by closing up the super-small doorway and reconfiguring the kitchen layout, swapping out the angled peninsula for a larger rectangular island, but keeping the triangular soffit overhead. There, the team removed the drywall to expose the framing and gain much-needed ceiling height, then wrapped the framing in fir to emphasize it. New, streamlined cabinetry accommodates the owners’ stock of equipment and is topped with a natural quartzite that can withstand all the cooking and baking prep.

In selecting finishes, the goal was to not upstage so many of the original details, like Milton Stricker’s stained-glass windows, the architect’s art installation above the fireplace and the clear cedar covering the walls. “You don’t want to take away from what’s there, like the wood and stained glass, but you also don’t want anything you add to be flat, because everything is alive in this house,” said Viggiano. To that end, the designer chose a large-format porcelain tile for the flooring that evokes river rock, and aquamarine velvet upholstery for the couch, both of which balance the challenging orange tones of the existing cedar.

Yet for all the change, much that is essential about the house has stayed the same, such as the dining room, which still has Stricker’s own Frank Lloyd Wright barrel chair replica set (just with new cushions). It’s perfect for hosting meals, or a quiet sit watching birds flit in the tree canopy. “Organic architecture is not so much about the architecture as it is the site that the architecture is on,” said Busetti. “This house is really a sanctuary for being in the woods.”