Contemporary home is new but keeps Larchmont scale

By Suzan Filipek

The third time is the charm for this growing family which recently moved into its almost dream home in Larchmont Village.

The couple completed interior remodels at their first two homes. This new one, a 1929 bungalow found for them by Realtor Ali Jack, was just what they were looking for.

“It was in a very deteriorated state and needed serious TLC,” said homeowner Danielle Rago.

“It gave us the opportunity to build something new and different... We were also planning on starting a family and had fallen in love with the Larchmont neighborhood.”

The project also gave Rago, cofounder of This by That, a public relations and advisory agency for progressive architects, the opportunity to work with one of her favorite clients, architects Claus Benjamin Freyinger and Andrew Holder of The LADG. They maintained the original home’s quadrant layout and took off from there.

A surprise design element of the home is a stainless steel column rising from the backyard swimming pool to support an overhang.

“Interesting,” is how Rago and her husband Darren Hochberg described the concept when it was first presented to them. “It’s definitely a point of interest. It’s a fun place to put it,” Rago said of the beam rising from the water.

They saved half of the original home’s existing footprint and used the same foundation and framing to build addi- tions to the front and back of the northwest and northeast sides of the house.

The original 1,426-squarefoot home was reconfigured into a 1,950-square-foot three-bedroom house and accessory dwelling unit (ADU).

The result, on Plymouth Boulevard, was recently featured in the March/April cover story of Dwell Magazine.

Other features of the finished house include preserving the massing of the front of the house to keep in line with the neighborhood, and the addition of a vaulted, double-height roof in the center of the home above a striking all-white quartz kitchen — the heart (and hearth) of the home.

Rather than have a fireplace, family and friends gather around the kitchen, explains Rago.

The home has open spaces with indoor/outdoor living and sustainable landscap-

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