The Maryland Residence is a home in Bethesda

Bethesda, Maryland

Bethesda is a census designated place in southern Montgomery County, Maryland, United States, just northwest of Washington, D.C. It takes its name from a local church, the Bethesda Meeting House , which in turn took its name from Jerusalem's Pool of Bethesda...

, Maryland

Maryland

Maryland is a U.S. state located in the Mid Atlantic region of the United States, bordering Virginia, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia to its south and west; Pennsylvania to its north; and Delaware to its east...

, United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

, designed by César Pelli

César Pelli

César Pelli is an Argentine architect known for designing some of the world's tallest buildings and other major urban landmarks. In 1991, the American Institute of Architects listed Pelli among the ten most influential living American architects...

. Completed in 1989, it is one of the few houses by an architect known mainly for his large commercial projects. It takes the form of five small pavilions

Pavilion (structure)

In architecture a pavilion has two main meanings.-Free-standing structure:Pavilion may refer to a free-standing structure sited a short distance from a main residence, whose architecture makes it an object of pleasure. Large or small, there is usually a connection with relaxation and pleasure in...

 centrally connected. Pelli has described it as a complex.

Pelli began designing the house in 1985 for a client with a family of four. Construction began on the house in 1987 after an existing Colonial Revival home on the lot

Lot (real estate)

In real estate, a lot or plot is a tract or parcel of land owned or meant to be owned by some owner. A lot is essentially considered a parcel of real property in some countries or immovable property in other countries...

 was demolished

Demolition

Demolition is the tearing-down of buildings and other structures, the opposite of construction. Demolition contrasts with deconstruction, which involves taking a building apart while carefully preserving valuable elements for re-use....

. It was completed in 1989. The general contractor

General contractor

A general contractor is responsible for the day-to-day oversight of a construction site, management of vendors and trades, and communication of information to involved parties throughout the course of a building project.-Description:...

, E.A. Baker Co., Inc., won a Craftmanship Award from the Washington Building Congress for their work on the doors and windows. Pelli donated some of his plans and sketches to the Library of Congress

Library of Congress

The Library of Congress is the research library of the United States Congress, de facto national library of the United States, and the oldest federal cultural institution in the United States. Located in three buildings in Washington, D.C., it is the largest library in the world by shelf space and...

 later.

It is situated on a large, slightly trapezoid

Trapezoid

In Euclidean geometry, a convex quadrilateral with one pair of parallel sides is referred to as a trapezoid in American English and as a trapezium in English outside North America. A trapezoid with vertices ABCD is denoted...

al parcel on Glenbrook Road in a residential neighborhood of Bethesda within walking distance

Walkability

Walkability is a measure of how friendly an area is to walking. Walkability has many health, environmental, and economic benefits. Factors influencing walkability include the presence or absence and quality of footpaths, sidewalks or other pedestrian right-of-ways, traffic and road conditions,...

 of downtown, at the corner of the unused Elm Street right-of-way. The lot was extensively landscaped during construction, and tall trees shield the home, set back from the street slightly with a semicircular driveway.

The one-and-a-half-story brick gallery runs east-west roughly 100 feet (30 m) in length. Pelli describes this section as the building's "central concept ... [I]t is the dominant space". At the entrance end is a wall of teak

Teak

Teak is the common name for the tropical hardwood tree species Tectona grandis and its wood products. Tectona grandis is native to south and southeast Asia, mainly India, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Burma, but is naturalized and cultivated in many countries, including those in Africa and the...

 and opaque glass with trellis

Trellis (agriculture)

A trellis is an architectural structure, usually made from interwoven pieces of wood, bamboo or metal that is often made to support climbing plants...

 and French doors. It has a gently pitched

Roof pitch

In building construction, roof pitch is a numerical measure of the steepness of a roof, and a pitched roof is a roof that is steep.The roof's pitch is the measured vertical rise divided by the measured horizontal span, the same thing as what is called "slope" in geometry. Roof pitch is typically...

 gable

Gable

A gable is the generally triangular portion of a wall between the edges of a sloping roof. The shape of the gable and how it is detailed depends on the structural system being used and aesthetic concerns. Thus the type of roof enclosing the volume dictates the shape of the gable...

d roof, which Pelli says "appears to be floating and acts as a clerestory

Clerestory

Clerestory is an architectural term that historically denoted an upper level of a Roman basilica or of the nave of a Romanesque or Gothic church, the walls of which rise above the rooflines of the lower aisles and are pierced with windows. In modern usage, clerestory refers to any high windows...

 to light the interior".

Two two-story stucco

Stucco

Stucco or render is a material made of an aggregate, a binder, and water. Stucco is applied wet and hardens to a very dense solid. It is used as decorative coating for walls and ceilings and as a sculptural and artistic material in architecture...

-faced hipped-roofed

Hip roof

A hip roof, or hipped roof, is a type of roof where all sides slope downwards to the walls, usually with a fairly gentle slope. Thus it is a house with no gables or other vertical sides to the roof. A square hip roof is shaped like a pyramid. Hip roofs on the houses could have two triangular side...

 three-by-two bay

Bay (architecture)

A bay is a unit of form in architecture. This unit is defined as the zone between the outer edges of an engaged column, pilaster, or post; or within a window frame, doorframe, or vertical 'bas relief' wall form.-Defining elements:...

 pavilions project from the north. These are used as living spaces. The smaller pavilions on the south, which take the shapes of octagons and staggered squares, house the kitchen

Kitchen

A kitchen is a room or part of a room used for cooking and food preparation.In the West, a modern residential kitchen is typically equipped with a stove, a sink with hot and cold running water, a refrigerator and kitchen cabinets arranged according to a modular design. Many households have a...

, living

Living room

A living room, also known as sitting room, lounge room or lounge , is a room for entertaining adult guests, reading, or other activities...

 and dining room

Dining room

A dining room is a room for consuming food. In modern times it is usually adjacent to the kitchen for convenience in serving, although in medieval times it was often on an entirely different floor level...

s.