Workaday Design introduced intricate paneling and sensible spatial strikes to a 1963 Robert Rummer dwelling—with a 6,000-gallon koi pond—in Beaverton, Oregon.
John and Nadia Aazad Dunn had lived in Portland for many years—he moved from Kansas in 1998, she was born within the Southeast neighborhood, they usually first met whereas they each have been working at Starbucks—however they didn’t study Rummer homes till 2019.
John is a design director who beforehand labored at Nike, and he first heard concerning the houses from his coworkers there. “A variety of Nike individuals personal these houses,” John says concerning the residences, which have been developed by Robert Rummer, an insurance coverage man turned builder whose aim was to deliver modernism to the center class. Most of his initiatives are set within the Portland suburbs, the place the Nike World Headquarters can also be positioned.
Intrigued, the couple began going to open homes simply to look, they usually fell in love with the houses’ midcentury type and indoor/outside DNA. They have been additionally curious concerning the communities which have grown up round them. “The Rummers are a cool historic factor to dig into,” says Nadia, a civil engineer. “It’s not simply that they’re so stunning and architecturally attention-grabbing, however that there’s totally different pockets of them round city.”
Rummer, who died in 2025 on the age of 97, constructed his first dwelling in 1959. He was impressed by Joseph Eichler, and he employed the identical architect, A. Quincy Jones, for his early designs. The main target for these homes was not on the entrance facade, however on the again. In lots of Rummer houses, an unassuming entrance entry leads into an inside glass-walled atrium, round which the home flows, culminating in floor-to-ceiling home windows on the rear that body the yard.
Earlier than: Atrium
Earlier than: John and Nadia Aazad Dunn purchased their 1963 Rummer dwelling in Beaverton, Oregon, in 2022.
Courtesy of Workaday Design
After: Atrium
Workaday Design reinstated a full glass panel on the kitchen facet of the atrium, and John and Nadia had the concrete pad refinished.
Picture: LUKE + MALLORY LEASURE
“You’ll be able to stroll by the home within the nude and no person will see you,” Rummer informed Oregon Dwelling journal of his ground plans in 2012. “Each home within the outdated days had a giant entrance window and a giant entrance porch the place individuals may sit and watch the neighbors go by. And also you go into one in every of my homes and also you don’t know what your neighbors are doing as a result of you’ll be able to’t see them. The birds know what you’re doing. The squirrels.”
Rummer constructed 750 homes between 1959 and 1975 within the Portland metro space, 300 of that are within the modernist type—together with his personal within the Bohmann Park Neighborhood, which is a veritable time capsule while you drive by its streets in the present day. John and Nadia discovered their Rummer in 2022 on one in every of their open home crawls, positioned simply two miles from their earlier dwelling, in one in every of Rummer’s early subdivisions.
Earlier than: Kitchen Entry
Earlier than: A stepped wall blocked sight traces from the entry atrium to the window wall overlooking the yard.
Picture: Workaday Design
See the complete story on Dwell.com: Earlier than & After: To Encourage Their Midcentury Renovation, They Toured the Builder’s Personal DwellingAssociated tales:Why This Japanese Architect Lower Energy to the Grid Simply 10 Days Earlier than Constructing His Household HomePlywood Constructed-Ins Reframe a Household’s Flat at a Revered Modernist Growth in LisbonA Stairway to Heaven Types the Roof of This Cottage Add-On in Australia
