A historic house in Cape Cod was brought down and rebuilt to match its original structure, form, and detail, but with modern construction means and according to modern building codes.

The house had grown immensly throughout its life, so that the product that we were looking at was actually an accumulation of many changes. It is this active process of additions, subtractions, cares, and abuses from its former inhabitors - rather than a style - that renders a historic structure as valuable.

Ioana Urma worked on this project at Imai Keller Moore researching the existing structure and construction so as to bring it up to code in its reconstruction, translating observations and analyses into architectural drawings and details, with particular study spent on the complicated double-sided central corbelling chimney. She worked on this project with Randall Imai and Christine Dunn.

The most difficult aspect of this project was rebuilding it to look the same but meet modern building codes, particularly the structure, which was a lot thinner, and the chimney, which was complicated.

All photos are by Elton-Pope Lance. The drawings, by Ioana Urma, belong to I.K.M.