The prospect of retirement doesn’t just signal the end of a career; it offers the chance to recalibrate and re-prioritize in life.
13 Ways to Use Slate in the Home
July 1, 2015
Whether tiles or shingles, indoor or outdoor, the use of slate in each of these homes provides its spaces with a textural and chromatic contrast.
The Plane House—an idyllic vacation home perched on a mountain on the Greek island of Skiathos—was a hugely personal and collaborative project between the Mourtzouchoses and another set of brothers, their architect buddies, Dimitris and Konstantinos Karampatakis, of Athens’s K-Studio. In an effort to root the home to its location, the team elected to use dry-stacked slate quarried from a nearby island for much of the main structure.
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Originally appeared in An Idyllic Vacation Home in Greece
Designed in 1948 by Marcel Breuer for the MoMA’s “House in the Museum Garden” exhibition of 1949, the house for America's everyman drew a record number of visitors and is regarded as one of MoMA’s most influential architecture exhibitions of the twentieth century. In 2007, the house was transferred to the National Trust from the Rockefeller's ownership and since then a team of curators and architects from the Rockefeller Brothers Fund has been restoring it to its original splendor. Originally, the house was outfitted with bluestone flagging, but there was not enough room during restoration, so the team opted for slate in the living area and patio.
Originally appeared in Restoring Breuer's House in Garden
An adventurous indoor-outdoor home by the Boston practice Höweler + Yoon Architecture acts as a beacon for three generations of a tight-knit family. The flooring in the house alternates between seven-inch-wide oak planks and slate tile, the latter extending to the first-floor terrace.
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Originally appeared in This Woodland Home in Virginia Was Built for Modern, Multigenerational Living
After nearly eight years of renting a tiny apartment in the center of Asolo, in northern Italy, Guido Chiavelli and his wife, Sabrina, bought a crumbling and abandoned farmhouse with an overgrown vineyard. During renovation, the ground floor was covered in locally sourced Italian slate.
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Originally appeared in A Renovated Farmhouse in Northern Italy
Fine craftsmanship underlies this collaboration between Zecc Architects and designer Roel van Norel in the quiet forest north of Utrecht. Bert Oostenbruggen planned the home's basic structure, including its unusual shutters, while van Norel handmade its bespoke wooden interior. The west side is clad with six shutters made of horizontal, western red cedar slats. The gabled home has an asymmetrical roof, with slate shingles that extend down the eastern side to close it off completely.
Courtesy of
Roel van Norel
Originally appeared in This Light-Filled Cabin in the Netherlands Is Completely Made by Hand
In southwestern England, an architect transforms a former postman’s cottage on a sprawling estate into a home that radiates from its original foundations. To integrate the former postman’s cottage with the new design, architect David Sheppard added a concrete column adjacent to an existing stone chimney and a new slate chimney “at the heart of the composition.”
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Originally appeared in A Transformed Postman's Cottage in England
Mad Men’s Vincent Kartheiser has all he needs in his compact, 580-square-foot Hollywood abode. Before renovation, the diminutive space was carved into a variety of rooms. It was not until Kartheiser commenced a partnership with designer and builder Funn Roberts in 2010, that the space was renovated into one large, open room. The next deft touch was arranging the bathroom and closets along one wall, the former of which is covered in Montauk black slate, which Roberts found.
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Originally appeared in The Tiny Hollywood Home of Mad Men's Vincent Kartheiser
In Houston, where bigger means better and suburbanites in SUVs dominate the highways, Dawn Finley and Mark Wamble are anomalies: Their domestic lives fit into 1,200 square feet, and their commute to work is but a walk downstairs. Although both Finley and Wamble teach at the Rice School of Architecture, they had never designed a residence before their own. They wanted an unadorned and uncomplicated house, a reaction to the chaotic sprawl of the city around them. They chose IKEA for the simple kitchen; the floors, like those in the bathroom, are Brazilian slate.
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Originally appeared in Houston, TX
Architect Cary Bernstein transformed a dated garage into a modern playroom for clients in San Francisco. Playful but sophisticated, the room was designed to evolve with the family, and defies the Disneyfied palette that makes adults gnash their teeth. But writing on the walls is encouraged, thanks to a magnetic slate chalkboard from Claridge Products.
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Originally appeared in A Garage Converted Modern Playroom
A couple in Evanston, Illinois, asked John Issa of Perimeter Architects to add on a two-story, 650-square-foot addition to their traditional farmhouse. The new volume is clad in composite slate siding by Inspire Roofing Products; the windows are Pella.
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Originally appeared in This Farmhouse-Style Home Gets a Clever and Geometric Update
The super's unit was anything but in this Upper West side co-op, however architect Brad Zizmor saw potential in the apartment nobody could love. A re-imagined interior and gracious new outdoor space transformed this architectural blunder to boon. Humble materials are used to good effect throughout the apartment. The bathroom contains ordinary rope lights concealed above the sinks. The tumbled slate mosaic tiles are by Artistic tile.
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Originally appeared in Pretty Super
In this tightly packed Northeast city where developers pounce first on any available lot, two young architects found a rare ground-up opportunity. Finished in 2002, the triple-decker home is clad in western red cedar and copper, which is slowly acquiring a green patina. They bought slate in bulk to cover all three apartments’ bathroom floors, patios, and the mud room.
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Originally appeared in Beantown Dream
Architecture firm _naturehumaine designs a dream home in eastern Quebec for a behind-the-scenes movie guy who wanted a place to recuperate from intensive, exhausting projects. Architects Stéphane Rasselet and David Dworkind delivered with a strikingly simple concept. They anchored two stacked, rectangular volumes into a steep mountainside surrounded by awe-inspiring vistas. Sticking to a gray-scale color palette, they installed slate tile floors that softly contrast with the white walls and Eames dining chairs. “It lets the views out the windows become the focus,” Dworkind explains.
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Originally appeared in Amazing Cantilevered Home in the Mountains
The Plane House—an idyllic vacation home perched on a mountain on the Greek island of Skiathos—was a hugely personal and collaborative project between the Mourtzouchoses and another set of brothers, their architect buddies, Dimitris and Konstantinos Karampatakis, of Athens’s K-Studio. In an effort to root the home to its location, the team elected to use dry-stacked slate quarried from a nearby island for much of the main structure.
Photo by Andrea Wyner.
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