Check out this new photo of Rural Modern pool deck.
Our client finished Phase Two of this project in summer 2021 to complete a project process that began in 2014.
Please check-back for other updates about the design + construction process!
We are excited to report that Old Northside Villa has broken ground on north Broadway Street!
In brief, this stately French Provincial-inspired estate melds traditional + modern design influences fitting for the neighborhood and client tastes.
We’ll be keeping up with progress on the project page, so be sure to check back for updates!
Here is a sneak peek of New Modern House Ditch located on Ditch Road north of 96th (a couple lots north of the big radio tower). Owners have lived in the home since late 2016 and are settling-in. Landscaping and furnishings are taking root and we look forward to sharing more in the coming months!
We were happy to have had the opportunity to help our interior design colleagues and their client solve their design dilemmas with a solid design concept for a New Modern House in Meridian Hills at the SW corner of 75th & Central. It’s a great location and we wish them the best in the execution of the project.
Another great design project is underway for this New Modern Renovation on property bordering Williams Creek. It may as well be a new home, as we are keeping only 20% of the existing house, but working to reclaim as much material as possible, and also integrate as many sustainable design opportunities as is feasible since our client desires a net zero solution. This property abuts Williams Creek but is actually in the Town of Meridian Hills. We look forward to engaging the beautiful site to achieve dramatic views and outdoor space – this view is from the wooded hillside (woods and wildlife not shown) 🙂
Midcentury Entry at New Modern House Ditch Road is nearing completion. Thermally-treated wood strikes again, in this case, thermally-treated Poplar makes an appearance. Check out the project page here.
Thermal modifying wood is a technology that improves the resilience of wood products used in exterior conditions and can be used on most wood species. Our client at #Copperwood inquired about the technology and if we could use it at their home – which we did. On that project, we used thermally-modified Ash. Client for this project was so impressed by the beauty and resilience after visiting Copperwood, they requested something like it here – in this case, thermally-modifed Poplar was used, provided by a local source who learned about the technology from HAUS/Copperwood.
Infinity Pool has been poured in the rear private courtyard at our New Modern House Ditch Road project. This unique project is progressing inside and out. We are looking forward to project completion in late 2016. Please check out the project page for the most current updates!
WSJ Article examines how some luxury homeowners are rediscovering so-called campus style homes, using separate wings or buildings for living, recreation, cooking, and sleeping.
Check-out these HAUS compound style homes – New Modern House Ditch, French Country Estate, New Modern Farmhouse 2, New Modern House 2.
By CECILIE ROHWEDDER
March 24, 2016 9:58 a.m. ET
To go from the living room to the master suite of their home on Maryland’s Chesapeake Bay, Hans and Julia Krebs walk to a different building.
Their bedroom is separated from the main house by a book-lined indoor walkway. Another walkway leads to a third building, which houses the kitchen and dining area, as well as a suite for Ms. Krebs’s mother, a frequent visitor. The garage is in a fourth building. What ties it all together: white, modern facades and black, gabled roofs.
“Our goal was to maximize privacy and view,” says Mr. Krebs, a 69-year-old retired gynecologic oncologist. With his wife, a 65-year-old health care lawyer, Mr. Krebs spent $1.5 million to build the four-bedroom, 5,000-square-foot home, which also includes a boathouse and a farm-equipment building.
Architects call them campus or compound-style homes. Like small university campuses, they are made up of separate wings or buildings that have distinct functions, such as sleeping, cooking or lounging. Separating different parts of living, fans say, allows not just for privacy, but also for a different look and feel in each area. Proponents also argue that campuses blend into the landscape and allow for life with few or no stairs, a popular feature with aging Americans.
Campus-style living has its roots in American history. Maryland, where Annapolis-based architect Marta Hansen built the Krebs’s home in 2006, is rife with five-part Colonial compounds that consist of a main house attached to smaller wings on both sides. The classic American homestead is a cluster of buildings that include the kitchen and smokehouse, set apart to reduce fire risk. In traditional Spanish and Mexican architecture, connected buildings are arranged around a patio.
Creating a village for one owner has its downsides. A house deconstructed into different parts can be more expensive than a single-unit home—between 25% and 30% more, estimates San Francisco-based architect Malcolm Davis, who frequently designs multipart homes. More buildings require more perimeter foundation, he explains, adding to construction costs. More exterior walls need more windows and cause more potential heat loss, adding to maintenance costs.
Multibuilding living can also create its own set of practical considerations—one may have to traipse a longer distance to find the children, or retrieve the Amazon package from the front door.
Fans dismiss such criticisms. Kristin and Scott Fine, a general partner at a hedge fund, recently completed renovating their 101-year-old waterfront home in Darien, Conn. As part of the two-year, $2.5 million project, a glass-and-steel structure was created to attach a kitchen wing to one side of the house, and a separate, open-air steel arbor was erected to create an outdoor living room, framing the view of Long Island Sound.
The arbor connects the home to a new yoga and pool house, whose detachment from the main house—busy with four children and two dogs—makes the space more effective, according to the Fines. “A yoga room being physically separate is key to quieting my mind,” says Ms. Fine, a 43-year-old interior designer who has her own company, Fine Concepts, and worked on the project with New York City-based architect Michael Haverland. She says she usually runs to the building barefoot—”maybe” throwing on boots if there is snow.
The Fines’ compound isn’t done: The two buildings are first steps in a master plan for the 6-acre property that now has 13,400 square feet of living space. The couple is expecting to add a sports building with an indoor lap pool, spa and batting cage, as well as a building with private gallery space that can also house three artists as part of a planned residency program.
In 2014, Jonathan King and Jim Stott bought one of the oldest houses in Maine, 354-year-old Bray House in Kittery Point. The founders of Stonewall Kitchen, a York, Maine-based maker of jams, sauces and other specialty foods, Messrs. King and Stott had previously lived in historic homes and knew the shortcomings, such as low ceilings and wind blowing through old walls in the winter. But they were drawn to Bray House’s rich past and waterfront setting, to Mr. King “the most beautiful view in the world.”
The pair turned to Jacobsen Architecture, a Washington, D.C., firm with expertise in fusing contemporary space and historic buildings, including at the U.S. Capitol.
Now, 1,450-square-foot Bray House is undergoing a $1 million renovation. It will be linked on both sides to indoor glass walkways leading to no fewer than 12 gabled pavilions that house a large living and dining space, a master-bedroom suite and an office. As part of the $5 million project, which Messrs King and Stott hope to complete by Labor Day 2017, even the laundry room will have its own building.
“We want friends to come in, enjoy cocktails by the fire at Bray House, but then go into a 21st century space,” says Mr. King, who is 50 and chief creative officer of Stonewall Kitchen. Spreading out the additions horizontally, he says, means adding space—8,125 square feet of it—without adding height. “It’s not going to feel like we’re building this massive thing to block the view of the ocean.”
Owner Diane Goldsmith from Orinda, Calif., bought the 2,700-square-foot, three-bedroom house with her husband, David, for $1.6 million in 2012. “I liked the idea of a sense of privacy and change as you walk from one part of the house into another,” says Ms. Goldsmith, a 65-year-old graphic designer. “Family and interactions on one side; rest and contemplation of the beauty of Sea Ranch on the other,” adds Mr. Goldsmith, a 68-year-old retired investment banker.
Spreading out a house can create inconvenience. Answering the door is a trek. So is hauling around laundry or fixing a cup of tea. Owners say technology helps keep it together: Baby monitors can track children in far-off nurseries, and many keep kettles and refrigerators in the master suite to avoid nighttime trips to the kitchen.
Peter and Maria Grazia Selzer’s $2 million, 3,600-square-foot home built by San Francisco-based architect Nick Noyes in Taos, N.M., consists of a rammed-earth Territorial-style house and two flat-roof Pueblo-style buildings on both sides. As such, the distance from the master bedroom to the kitchen is between 60 and 70 feet.
Mr. Selzer, a 70-year-old radiologist, says the isolation of the bedroom, located at the end of its own wing, is an advantage. “You could have a brass band going on in the main part of the house and we wouldn’t hear it,” he says.
Write to Cecilie Rohwedder at cecilie.rohwedder@wsj.com
We are really excited that the New Modern Home Ditch Road is finally underway. This Mid-Century Modern (MCM) inspired design is on a large plot affording ample privacy in this understated design.
New Modern Home Treesdale is scheduled for completion in late Fall 2015 just in-time for our client’s new arrival (baby girl)! Please check back for more updates as this modern home nears completion.
New Modern Home Treesdale is breaking ground this month in Carmel, IN. We are grateful for the opportunity to be part of the team integrating a slightly more modern design into the final lot at Treesdale off of Towne Road between 96th and 106th.