With iconic views of Portland, this hilltop home from Oregon’s Emerick Architects is an absolute gem. “It is really 240 degrees of mountains and bridges and all that makes Portland magical, while still being five minutes from downtown,” Principal Melody Emerick says. “The house is located at a bend in the road, and everybody knows this house driving by it.”

Melody’s clients are a couple with young children and, to the architect’s delight, impeccable design taste. “The home was cut up and closed off and they really wanted to open it up, and to have better connection room-to-room as well as to the views and the outdoors,” she says, but admits remodeling a house like this is tricky. “We work hard to make sure that the historic soul stays intact. This is through proportion, flow, details…all things that need to resonate with the heart of the old house. Having said that, it is 2022 and people live differently than they did 100 years ago. We want it to be relevant now and for future generations.”

Melody and her team took out a wall at the entry, allowing the eye to immediately travel through the dining room and land on the view beyond. They also removed a small half bathroom and updated the details in the stairwell and front door to create a little more visual “breathing room.” 

From there, the living space was primarily surface updates—the fireplace façade, lighting, etc.—with the big exception being a wall of bifold doors that open to a two-story deck. “The deck was a major undertaking as the structure was failing and it is on a very steep sloping site,” Melody recalls. This created the perfect setting for a fairly open floorplan, but the living, dining, and kitchen still feel separate from each other. “They each have their own integrity as rooms, but they now visually flow together so that family can really easily ‘live’ in these rooms even while doing different activities,” she explains. 

For furnishings, the client led the charge. “The client really worked hard on the furniture, and it fits nicely with the design goals for the house of being airy and simple, yet very warm and homey,” the architect says. “We really love to have a consistent palette for a house so that rooms flow from one to another easily visually.”

Take a closer look in the slideshow.