Visitors to the entrance of former basement in a Portland home are faced with a choice: Turn right into the light-filled virtuous world of fitness and physical exercise or turn left into a dimly lit den of Dionysian pleasure. This dichotomy describes the conversion of a hillside basement / crawlspace into a home gym and wine cellar for a Portland family.

The gym space needed to be light and bright and to not feel like it was a subterranean bunker. PATH designed translucent wall panels to borrow natural light from an adjacent room, and simulated a skylight using fluorescent bulbs and light diffusing resin panels that contain actual plant leaves to make a dramatic linear lighting element. The home's existing timber framing was exposed to evoke the same feelings of building strength and doing work that one feels while exercising.

In contrast, the wine cellar space was carved out of the earth with new concrete foundation walls poured to shore up the house and to display wine racks. A new concrete wine bar was poured to match. All of this exposed concrete along with the earth sheltering provide the thermal mass for maintaining optimal wine stor age temperature without the use of mechanical heating and cooling. The simple materials palate of stainless steel and oak and have a refined-yet-rustic quality that alludes to the two materials used by wine makers for fermentation tanks.

Project Team: Corey Martin, Ben Kaiser, Scott Mannhard