Three years ago, architects and life partners Kailin Gregga and Steven Lazen were scouring Seattle for opportunities to buy a home—or a lot on which they could make their mark.

“We were drawn to the idea of having a hand in making our own space,” says Gregga. “[But] in [Seattle’s] crazy real estate market it’s a little bit inconceivable to say [we’re] going to buy some land and build [our] own house.”

To make the couple’s dream a reality, Gregga, who is a part of Best Practice Architecture & Design, linked up with Rob Humble, founding partner and design principal for Hybrid Architecture. Humble happened to be developing a set of townhouses in Squire Park, a neighborhood of the Central District, and the collaboration would mean Gregga and Lazen could cut costs and do some customization with a new-build home. For Humble, it would also mean that one of the townhouses would already be occupied when the rest went on the market.

Big Mouth House—so dubbed because one of Gregga and Lazen’s friends photoshopped teeth onto a photo of the main window, giving it the look of an open maw—is situated at the front of the three-townhouse series. Each is clad in vertical panels of black metal. While the two townhouses behind Gregga and Lazen’s, units B and A, are accented by splashes of pink, thanks to their house numbers, Big Mouth puts color front and center, using it to frame a cantilevered floor-to-ceiling window, line the front entrance, and highlight the roof deck railing.

Each unit has a roof deck that, to the west, overlooks Seattle’s skyline and the Central District. A gabion retaining wall stands in front of Big Mouth, while landscaped walkways mark the way to the additional homes.

At 1,850 square feet, with three bedrooms and three bathrooms, Big Mouth is a little larger than its two counterparts, with an additional bathroom and a configuration that, unlike the others, puts the main living area on the second floor rather than the third.

Gregga calls it a “genius” move on the part of the developer, because if “the middle unit and back unit had kept the same layout that we had, they would essentially not have any views from their living spaces. The site is actually [on a] a little slope, so by flipping the units and taking advantage of that, all the living spaces actually [have] great views.”

To offer a counterbalance to the black exteriors, Gregga and Lazen went with a white-box interior concept, punched up with dashes of color throughout to give it life and dynamism. They developed a color palette, which can be seen on the kitchen’s main cabinets, that informed many parts of the home, including a rooftop mural by Seattle artist Sam Wood Wilson.

Depending on how you look at it, the challenge and the opportunity with Big Mouth’s interiors was to find ways to employ simple, affordable materials and organize the space in a way that felt open, beautiful, and luxurious, despite being smaller than Gregga and Lazen’s former homes. The lower level, like all three units, is home to an Accessory Dwelling Unit (ADU), which the couple currently uses as a studio, for bike storage, and more.

One of their goals was to maximize the second level for living and entertaining, which meant the third floor would house bedrooms, laundry, and a stairway to the roof. “The lower level and the upper level are a little shorter [than the middle floor],” says Gregga. “We [took] a foot from each of those floors to [give to] that middle [floor] so that the ceilings felt really tall and really open. And then we further decided not to enclose the joists in that level [to create height and volume].”

The couple went with flexible lighting on the second floor, so the room design could shift over time. “We love the idea of a light fixture that you can swing around, tie up or together, put on a hook,” Gregga says. “If you have a dining-room table fixture that’s hung at a certain height and meant to be centered over a table [and] you take that away, it can be awkward.”

They also wanted to retain an airy and open space, which meant their things needed homes and the kitchen needed to have clear sightlines. A large two-story shelf that the couple designed as a home for their assorted bric-a-brac, keepsakes, and books runs from the first to the second level. (It’s made from plastic laminate with a plywood edgeband, a motif that shows up throughout the home.) And Gregga and Lazen decided to go for a downdraft hood that sits next to the range, rather than one over the kitchen island, so there wasn’t an obstacle for the eye.

The ADUs in each home are a particularly exciting element for Gregga, Lazen, and the other owners. Gregga says Humble is the only person she knows who’s designing multifamily housing that incorporates ADUs in individual homes to be rented out, used as work-live space, or to house a relative.

“Something that [Rob] is really interested in—he works mostly in multifamily housing—is [the question of], ‘How do we avoid people moving to the suburbs?’” says Gregga. “How do you have more flexible ways of living?” Incorporating ADUs into the trio of townhomes offers a fresh take on communal living that also has implications for urban affordable housing, sustainability, and transportation access.

“The fact you have a space that is separate from your own, yet connected, that you could do a number of things with means that you can live in a house for a longer time,” says Gregga. “It’s the oldest idea, [but it] seems so fresh.”