Utter the word “custom” and visions of sprawling floor plans, lavish finishes, and top-of-the-line everything often come to mind. You know—those palatial playgrounds of the rich and famous that make for good television, and make average homeowners feel inadequate.
Some would argue that constructing a castle isn't so hard when space is unlimited and the budget knows no ceiling. A bigger challenge is seeing what sort of custom magic an architect or builder can conjure up with a less-than-perfect lot, a menu of (mostly) off-the-shelf materials, and an interior space limited to less than 3,000 square feet.
As the projects on the following pages show, a one-of-a-kind house doesn't have to be over the top. And custom craftsmanship needn't be a pleasure limited to the wealthiest 1 percent of the population. But when the parameters are tight, it does take a little extra forethought, ingenuity, and elbow grease to make the dream a reality.
Hip To Be Square
Commercial-grade materials find a home outside of Memphis.
Filling in one of the last remaining lots in a New Urbanist enclave of 950 homes wasn't an easy task for the design team at Memphis, Tenn.–based archimania. Sixteen years into the development of Harbor Town, a suburb of Memphis, the community's steady march of wood siding and tidy trim was beginning to feel redundant, although residents were leery of industrial materials and forms. Plus, the site wasn't exactly a no-brainer. The wedge-shaped parcel backed up to a pond and walking trail, meaning a front-loaded garage was inevitable. The reason was, the lot's scant 32 feet of street frontage left little room for anything but a garage out front.
Other homes on the block had downplayed their garages with second-story gables and trellises. Architect Todd Walker's modernist riff on this theme places a cantilevered mass, clad in orange corrugated metal, above a garage of cementitious panels. For contrast, an adjacent secondary volume (which houses a study and shelters a side courtyard from the street) is skinned in redwood. The materials are unorthodox, Walker concedes, but their horizontal orientation respects the rhythm of neighboring homes with clapboard siding. “As that redwood slowly fades to gray over time, it will begin to make a statement of permanence and anchor the house in its location,” he adds.
BD070301103L1.jpgCLICK HERE FOR IMAGE GALLERY© Jeffrey Jacobs Architectural Photography
BD070301103L1.jpgCLICK HERE FOR IMAGE GALLERY© Jeffrey Jacobs Architectural Photography
WINDOW DISPLAY: Custom glazing was this home's big-ticket item. An intimate courtyard facing south blurs the boundaries between indoors and outdoors with large expanses of low-E glass.
Photo Credit: © Jeffrey Jacobs Architectural Photography
TALL ORDER: The home's corrugated metal siding lays horizontal in front, but turns vertical toward the back, emphasizing the two-story massing of the elevation facing the pond.
Photo Credit: © Jeffrey Jacobs Architectural Photography
INDUSTRIAL STRENGTH: Inside, warm woods are offset by 6-inch, steel pipe columns, open cable railings, and a muscular fireplace surround of 1-inch ceramic tile. The round vents of a high-pressure HVAC system (seen in the ceiling fascia) serve as aesthetic elements in their own right.
Photo Credit: © Jeffrey Jacobs Architectural Photography
The 2,833-square-foot, three-bedroom home maintains a low profile in front, but its persona in back is less reserved. The rear elevation features a striking wall of double-height aluminum commercial storefront windows, topped by an exaggerated overhang that protects the house from the harsh afternoon sun. The overhang provides structural support for a metal-grate balcony off the master bedroom.
The interiors are no less dramatic, and yet they are cost-conscious. Exposed glulam beams, birch plywood cabinetry, a hickory floor, and ceilings of exposed 2x6 tongue-in-groove wood decking lend warmth and texture to the home's open, communal spaces. Neutral compositions of wood and steel are punctuated by vibrant accent walls. Built-in shelving at the top of an open cable-rail staircase is topped by a clerestory glass wall, allowing light to stream into the master bedroom while maintaining privacy.
Total square feet: 2,833
Lot price: $150,000
Construction cost: $285,600
Cost per square foot: $100
Total price tag: $576,000
Project: Orange House, Harbor Town, Tenn.; Size: 2,833 square feet; Builder: Pantik Homebuilders, Memphis, Tenn.; Architect/Interior designer: archimania, Memphis photos: jeffrey jacobs architectural photography
Farm Fresh
Simplicity rules in a South Hampton home for all seasons.
Last year, Forbes proclaimed Sagaponack, N.Y., the country's most expensive zip code, with a median home price of $2.7 million. When architect Michael Lomont staked out a street address for his young family in this once agrarian community on the eastern tip of Long Island, he paid less than half that amount—$1.3 million including land, site work, and construction costs—and ended up with a brand-new home. The 3,000-square-foot abode he designed and built on a 1.25-acre lot, just a half mile from the beach, is a soulful place with a zen-like quality. And it's green, too.
Exemplifying what Lomont calls “regionally inspired modernism,” the simple dwelling reads as two basic forms. Bedrooms are housed in a two-story, gabled, wood-clad structure that evokes the aesthetic of nearby barns. Public spaces are alternately located in a perpendicular volume of concrete stucco, oriented for passive solar heating and cooling. In winter, solar gain is captured via heavy glazing along a south-facing wall and retained in the family room's cast-in-place concrete floors. Green roof pavers (planted with perennial sedum) on the flat portions of the roof absorb the sun and provide an extra layer of insulation.
Come summer, many of these same features serve alternate functions. The green roof pavers, offset from the roof by about 6 inches, buffer the house from the heat. On the gable, a standing seam, zinc-coated aluminum roof (which is fully recyclable at the end of its 70-year lifespan) deflects strong sunlight. A west-facing covered porch provides not only shade, but power: It's topped by a 4-kilowatt photovoltaic panel system that generates enough electricity to run the air conditioner during peak season. The house was built with blown-in insulation to achieve maximum insulation values.
A simple, natural palette carries through from outside to inside. Thermal bluestone used for pavers in the landscaping reappears in the family room's striking fireplace surround (fashioned from a 6-foot-long, 3-inch-thick slab). Not limited to windows and doors, glass forms an interior curtain wall that brings light to a central stair (opposite page, bottom, left). Regionally harvested, quarter-sawn white oak is the material of choice for built-in cabinetry throughout the home, as well as for wood flooring.
BD070301106L1.jpgCLICK HERE FOR IMAGE GALLERY
BD070301106L1.jpgCLICK HERE FOR IMAGE GALLERY
OPEN WIDE: The home snuggles up to the northeastern property line, freeing up sight lines in back to a 15-acre wooded reserve to the south and west. Inside, a skylight above the stairwell allows light to filter into the core of the house.
BOTH SIDES NOW: A double-sided fireplace provides year-round warmth and ambiance.
SEASONS CHANGE: Glass and aluminum curtain walls in the family room draw solar gain in winter when the sun sits low in the sky. Come summer, native oaks on the site filter the sun's rays and prevent the space from becoming a hothouse.
“The floors are finished with tung oil, which doesn't yellow like polyurethane,” notes Lomont, an architect with Bridgehampton, N.Y.–based Stelle Architects. “The oil is environmentally friendly and so safe that it's often used on cutting boards. This was important because my kids spend a lot of time on the floor. Also, repairs are easy because you don't have to strip the floors. All you do is prep the area with a little light sanding and then apply the oil. It's very low maintenance.”
Total square feet: 3,000
Lot price: $450,000
Construction cost: $750,000
Cost per square foot: $250
Site work and landscaping: $125,000
Total price tag: $1.3 million
Project: East End Retreat, Sagaponack, N.Y.; Size: 3,000 square feet; Contractor/Architect/Interior designer: Michael Lomont, Sagaponack
Butterfly Effect
With split wings, a Puget Sound home straddles tough topography.
The clients were a young couple in their late 20s with lots of creativity, plenty of stamina, and a fair sprinkling of idealism. They were determined to build their own digs on upscale Bainbridge Island, Wash., in spite of a budget that would have sent most home buyers in search of a nice townhouse or condo. After a year-long hunt for property with architect Miles Yanick, they happened upon an oddball parcel at the right price: an extremely narrow (roughly 80 feet wide by 1,000 feet deep) piece of land that was heavily timbered and erratically sloped, with a creek running through it.
Gaining construction access to the property required crossing that creek, but the budget couldn't spare any extra funds to build a bridge. So Yanick found a detour. “We discovered an undeveloped road in the woods that had been plotted about 100 years ago and arranged with the city to photos: top: miles yanick; bottom: steven stolee officially vacate it, which gave us alternate access to the site,” he explains. “Once we got rid of that road, we were relieved of some of the setback requirements, so in essence, we ended up getting more property without actually getting more property. Part of our justification for decommissioning the old road was so that we could build farther away from the wetlands on the site, thereby protecting them. That went over well with the city.”
Following through on that promise, the house stands a respectful 40 feet from the creek bed and treads lightly on the local ecosystem. Its unusual, splayed footprint makes the most of 160-degree views of the forest, while negotiating the site's tricky topography with aplomb. “We had to spread the house around a little knoll and dig it into a small hillside,” says Yanick. “A bit of it is actually earth sheltered.”
BD070301108L1.jpgCLICK HERE FOR IMAGE GALLERY
BD070301108L1.jpgCLICK HERE FOR IMAGE GALLERY
ART BUILT IN: Little splurges include a staircase fabricated by a local steel artist and a stained, patterned concrete floor inlaid with bronze screeds. Forming ties in the concrete wall behind the stairs were left exposed in the masonry to create a dot pattern.
FRAME AND SAVE: Exposed 1x2 Douglas fir framing lends a casual, organic warmth to the home's fluid interior spaces. The kitchen cabinets (right) are made of manufactured maple.
The front entry, carved into the interstitial space between the two split masses, features a large expanse of glass. These windows fill the house with quiet, natural light and exploit the façade's due-south exposure for passive solar gain. A cast-concrete floor on the first level absorbs and retains heat.
Given the tight budget and the home's woodsy aesthetic, interior finishes were deliberately left raw and somewhat spare. Exposed joists and simple casings of locally harvested Douglas fir create texture in an otherwise restrained space. “There are almost no walls in the house, meaning there is very little gypsum wallboard and very little trim,” says Yanick. “This was a cost saver, too.”
Total square feet: 1,400
Lot price: $90,000
Construction and design cost (including site work): $250,000
Cost per square foot: $140
Total price tag: $340,000
Project: Bainbridge Island Residence, Bainbridge Island, Wash.; Size: 1,400 square feet; Builder: Central Sound Construction, Kingston, Wash.; Architect: Miles Yanick & Co., Bainbridge Island photos: steven stolee