The house’s owner, Ruth Hiller, a fine arts painter and corrective exercise specialist, purchased a 1950's single storey home located in Winter Park, Colorado.

All photographs courtesy of Bill Timmerman

Ruth, a single woman, approached Michael P. Johnson with the challenge to remodel this poorly designed building in a manner within a minimalist design ethic.

The Silverman Residence, juxtaposed in a non-descript neighborhood in Scottsdale, Arizona renders itself as architecture.

Upon approach, the street side façade (North Elevation) is a composition of white stucco finished volumes which are unified by a cantilevered steel structural element painted black. The steel element comprises an entrance canopy to the North and a balcony to the South that overlooks a lap/reflecting pool, as well as, the man made lake of which the neighborhood surrounds.

Upon entering the residence, a soaring volume is immediately encountered providing views to both the lower and upper level of the residence. The only demarcation between the two levels is a simple glass railing, creating a spaciousness not normally introduced into residential construction.

All photographs courtesy of Bill Timmerman

Of the multitude of structures built across the country each year, few ever become elevated to a level considered the “art of architecture” by architectural critics and/or historians. The vast majority of these houses and buildings remain mundane, held to a design level that will appease the taste of that great middle group or, as Frank Lloyd Wright referred to us: “the great mediocrity.”


Architectural critics judge the impression of a building in the immediate sense, before the building has had he chance to prove itself. Historians, on the other hand, have the benefit of hindsight, advising of the building’s architectural qualities after the second, third of fourth generation has passed. Seldom is a classic realized at the moment.

All photographs courtesy of Bill Timmerman