Project Description
A-Frame in Denver is the restoration and renovation of W.C. Muchow’s 1954 family home. Mr. Muchow who was educated at Cranbrook Academy was one of the leading modernists in Denver CO during the second half of the 20th Century. In 1957 the house won an Award of Merit from Sunset Magazine and was an Architectural Record House. In its citation, Architectural Record wrote that Mr. Muchow’s design “has been carried out forthrightly here . . . but with imagination . . . to produce a very festive unstereotyped home. A three-dimensional approach, developing the structure along with the plan, gives unusual spaciousness and livability for the inexpensive house on a small plot.”*
A-Frame was the Muchow family home until the 1970s after which it changed hands several times and fell off of the architectural radar. Begun in 2006, the goal of the A-Frame project was to restore and amplify the geometry of the house. Alterations and additions that had obscured the lines of the structure were cleared away; the signature design elements were revealed and restored but with a contemporary sensibility.
A-Frame in Denver proves that Mr. Muchow’s clean and efficient approach in the 1950s remains a fresh and delightful solution to the small urban home.