The couple needed more — more bathroom, more kitchen, more primary suite. An addition that looked like an addition would have solved the functional problem and created an aesthetic one.

The art collection was a real design input. The addition was an opportunity to give the house the architectural identity it had been gesturing toward for years.

The solution was a two-story tower that makes no attempt to mimic the colonial it adjoins, and is more honest for it. The tower and the colonial coexist as two distinct things that belong together.

The concrete panel surface casts shadows through the day — and on summer evenings becomes a projection surface for outdoor movies.

The shared bathroom problem is solved. The kitchen island hosts the dinner parties they had been wanting to give for years.

The art collection has better walls now. And the house finally looks like the people who live in it.