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The idea with 44th Street House was to create a home for a modern family and use details and proportions to highlight their innate strengths and true contemporary nature. The sustainable aspects of the project fall into what the architect terms "easy green" which includes; fitting the house to the site, super-insulating the envelope, orienting spaces and windows to maximize controlled solar gain and choosing certified-sustainable materials and products when they are cost competitive. The house is designed to be passive-solar; the main space has large south-facing windows and a concrete slab-on-grade floor.
The main space is designed to allow multiple ways of the family being ‘together' as a family depending on those variables. The 44th Street House is designed for a family of readers. The transverse shear wall (with necessarily limited openings) is thickened by continuous bookcases. There are multiple task-lit nooks for reading.
The architect wanted to use conventional building materials for a new use, "they are used almost always to imitate another higher quality product. The idea here was to use details and proportions to highlight their innate strengths and true contemporary nature."