Little Compton is Rhode Island's southeastern extreme, a classic southern New England landscape of forests, fields, farms, kettle ponds, and stone fences bordered by the Atlantic Ocean, the Sakonnet River, and the Massachusetts border.

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Our gently sloping site holds a number of former farm buildings, anchored by a 19th century farmhouse which serves as a vacation home for an extended family living in several other parts of the country. Our project enlarged an infill sunroom into a single-story bump-out with large, efficient windows, a higher roof and shingles that will eventually weather to match the existing house.

Our client is a retired architect who over the decades has renovated and added to the main house, barn, and corncrib with unabashedly modern insertions complementing the original historic vernacular. Our addition was the latest in this line of architectural adaptations. Its central location between the kitchen, living room, and basement stairs meant it needed to feel open and present despite its small size, and we accomplished this with a straightforward design incorporating a raised ceiling and ample glazing.

We were fortunate to have a client -- an architect retired from a long career in a large firm -- as mindful of details as DUAL, and we brought him along (virtually, via FaceTime) on our site visits. Special challenges included joining the existing pitched roof to our low-slope roof, coordinating the structure with an existing dry-laid retaining wall below, and maintaining access to the basement via stairs accessed by a floor hatch. Thanks to concealed hinges and skillful construction, the finished floor barely betrays this "secret" access. While new baseboard radiators were added to an existing hot-water loop, this is a true sunroom that maximizes passive solar comfort with large south-facing windows shielded by a tree in summer.