A carefully curated collection of seven remarkable double-height living rooms demonstrates how soaring ceilings can transform residential spaces into dramatic architectural statements. These exceptional interiors, spanning from the United States to Japan, Mexico, and Belgium, showcase innovative design approaches that maximize vertical space while creating visually striking environments that captivate and inspire.
This comprehensive lookbook represents the latest installment in an ongoing series that provides curated visual inspiration from architectural archives, following previous collections featuring homes with built-in sofas, secret rooms, and kitchens that double as partition walls. Each featured project demonstrates unique solutions for creating dramatic interior spaces through the strategic use of height and light.
The Three Chimney House in Virginia, designed by T W Ryan Architecture, showcases a stunning white-brick fireplace mantle that stretches dramatically from floor to the gabled roof, emphasizing the generous verticality of the country house located outside Charlottesville. This striking architectural element serves a dual purpose, functioning as both a focal point and a partition wall that cleverly separates the sitting room from the kitchen and dining area on the opposite side.
In Pennsylvania, Cutler Anderson Architects created an ingenious solution for the Pennsylvania Farmhouse by connecting second-floor bedrooms via a narrow open corridor, allowing the living room below to feature soaring ceilings with impressive top-to-bottom glazing. The design incorporates practical elements such as double-height rolling shutters that provide shade during hot weather, preventing solar gain while still permitting natural daylight to filter through strategic gaps.
The Library House in Japan's Tochigi prefecture, designed by Shinichi Ogawa Associates, caters specifically to an avid reader and his continuously expanding book collection. The architects created a remarkable lounge space with six-meter-high ceilings and filled an entire wall with built-in shelves, all illuminated by a strategically placed long narrow skylight that bathes the books in natural light throughout the day.
London's Queen's Park House, designed by Daytrip, features a stunning clerestory window that emphasizes the lofty ceilings of an extension created for an early-20th-century Edwardian house. The newly added double-height volume seamlessly combines kitchen, dining, and living areas, where vintage cane chairs designed by Tito Agnoli replace traditional soft furnishings, creating a sophisticated and minimalist aesthetic.
Casa Alférez in Mexico, designed by architect Ludwig Godefroy, presents a unique solution for a challenging sloping site within a Mexican pine forest. The architect delivered a towering structure that prioritizes height over width, most notably demonstrated in the living room where a small wood-burning stove is crowned with an impressive eight-meter-long flue pipe that draws the eye upward.
Camp O in the Catskills, designed by New York architect Maria Milans del Bosch, incorporates the traditional Japanese technique called shou sugi ban to char the cedar wood used to clad the upper half of her personal holiday home. This process emphasizes the timber's natural grain patterns and helps draw attention upward toward the house's slanted roof, where built-in shelving is cleverly nestled among the exposed structural beams.
The final featured project, Dailly in Belgium designed by Mamout, represents sustainable architecture through its creative use of materials salvaged from a warehouse that previously occupied the site in the Schaerbeek suburb of Brussels. The backyard house incorporates profiled bricks that now form one of the walls in the double-height sitting room, which is topped with an eye-catching blue-painted gabled ceiling that adds color and character to the space. This collection demonstrates how architects worldwide are pushing the boundaries of residential design, using vertical space as a powerful tool to create homes that are both functional and emotionally compelling.
