Dornob | Design Ideas Daily

Midcentury Modern Home Features Spiraling Exterior Stairs

Posted: 22 Dec 2012 10:00 AM PST

A 1960s home found abandoned, covered in kudzu vines and reduced to little more than a rusted skeleton has been renovated into a dramatic home with an eye-catching exterior spiral staircase. Tonic Design + Construction transformed the midcentury modern remains into a bright and open contemporary residence that retains the crisp simplicity of the original structure.

A couple discovered the bones of the home overlooking Crabtree Creek in Raleigh, North Carolina. While the house was in terrible shape, with rotted wood walls and floors, its potential was still evident in its steel frame. Those beams were painted white and filled with glass, wood, aluminum and rusted steel panels to create the new, modern 3500-square-foot home.

The steel frame remains the focus of the newly renovated home, the interior spaces built inside of it to enable the creation of exterior walkways and balconies. A steel and ipe wood bridge connects the driveway to the front door, just above a private walled garden.

A spiraling white exterior staircase breaks up the rectilinear geometry of the residence, leading from the second floor to a rooftop garden envisioned by owner Molly Chiles as a large-scale “table not op of the house” for hosting social events.