Stone Built House Designs
Anyone who commissions a custom home expects a lot. But the Walker family, of Fayetteville, Arkansas, asked for no beneath than a abode that would transform their lives.
["446.2"]The association includes Tim, Kathi, and their kids, Emily and Grace. Previously, they resided in a newer, acceptable home declared by Kathi as “nice, but not us,” and she likens application it to cutting addition else’s clothes.
“We capital a abode breadth we could absolutely live, article that was added than shelter. We were attractive for a home breadth we could go to escape, but additionally appoint with the apple about us,” says Tim. “We didn’t appetite a sheetrock box. Instead, we capital a abode breadth we could bless baby moments—like the comedy of ablaze and shadow.”
The ancestors had admirable ideas, but as a clear architectonics close buyer (Tim) and a bookkeeper (Kathi), they didn’t accept an absolute budget. What they did accept is the desire, the will, and a accord with Marlon and Meryati (Ati) Blackwell, principals of the award-winning Marlon Blackwell Architects.
The Blackwells are accepted for their modern—and stunning—commercial architecture. But their portfolio additionally includes residential projects, such as their own home, which was congenital for $185 per aboveboard foot. As importantly, the close is committed to the mantra: “Architecture can appear anywhere, on any scale, at any budget.”
So, back Tim asked Marlon over beers if the artist anticipation that he could allow to body a avant-garde home of his own, the acknowledgment was an accomplished affirmative.
["970"]For Tim, the accommodation to body was a case of practicing what he preaches. “I’ve been aggravating to argue audience of the amount of architectonics my accomplished alive life,” he says. “Asking Marlon to architectonics a abode for us was like active my own convictions.”
But for a ancestors that had never done annihilation like this afore (Tim says he’d never been on the applicant ancillary of any project), the anticipation was daunting. Both Tim and Kathi evoked the chat “unnerving” back talking about their animosity at the outset.
A agenda about the budget: The 2,500-square-foot home came in at beneath $200 per aboveboard foot, including labor, materials, and accession of utilities. To anyone who lives in a ample busline area, this may sound, to be blunt, like crazy talk. Blackwell allows a few things factored into it.
“In added genitalia of the country, this would amount a lot more,” says Marlon, acquainted that added regions accept abundant college activity and actual costs. “First of all, they are old friends, so we gave them what we alarm the ‘brother-in-law’ amount for fees. Next, we chose a simple and bargain actual palette: accurate bricks, accurate floors, and simple copse siding. We kept the account absolutely apple-pie and absolutely simple—which reduces activity costs. And we congenital carports instead of garages.”
For inspiration, the Blackwells drew on the attempt of the Case Study Houses. After all, those homes were an agreement in authoritative addition affordable for the average class.
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The Walkers accept continued admired the Case Study Houses, and dreamed of active in one. “Marlon told me Case Study Houses were cogent because they were congenital for their time, and that he would not artlessly archetype them, but rather architectonics a abode for our time, in the aforementioned spirit,” Tim says.
Of course, the Case Study Houses (and midcentury addition in general) are added generally associated with Southern California than Northwestern Arkansas. But accomplish no mistake, Fayetteville is not a drifter to the style.
Tim was angry assimilate addition as a apprentice at Arkansas State. “The art administration was in an amazing International-style building,” he remembers. “It was clean, simple, and uncluttered, with lots of light, white walls, and gray accurate floors. There was consistently the aroma of paint, and you could consistently apprehend music actuality played, and there was consistently a achievement of some array actuality staged. It had a huge appulse on me and it was the alpha of my adulation for the style.”
Fayetteville may not as acclaimed for Addition as, say, Los Angeles. However, Tim says that it is an abrupt destination for avant-garde barrio acknowledgment to the bequest of bounded midcentury architects such as Fay Jones, Edward Durell Stone, Warren Seagraves, and others. Now, accepted citizenry like the Blackwells, whose close accustomed a National Architectonics Award aftermost year, are included in their number.
When the Walkers bought their lot, they chose an all-embracing adjacency that has affluence of midcentury-modern and avant-garde amoebic homes, alongside acceptable dwellings.
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“Most neighbors accept been abundantly supportive,” Tim says. “I had an earlier admirer airing accomplished the added day, and he complimented me on the house. He said, ‘I don’t apperceive why anybody doesn’t body this way today. We don’t drive Model Ts about anymore, why would we appetite to body new old houses?’”
No one would analyze the Walkers’ new home, an L-shaped architecture that sits aloft a hill, to a best car. Its actual palette expresses itself in way that’s both honest and elegant. The accurate brick (half-size accurate block) that is acclimated on the exoteric shows itself, unadorned, in the interior. The accurate attic is alone slab-on-grade, and is not hidden by copse or tile. Throughout the house, cabinets are Baltic besom plywood. It’s a attending that is, certainly, evocative of aboriginal midcentury modern, but absolutely of the actuality and now.
“Nothing in the abode is non-functional or aloof for show. For example, there are window seats, but they are bare for seating, not for adornment,” Marlon says. “We focused on accepting the anatomy right. After that, we formed on authoritative the abstracts simple and light. It gives the aftereffect of floating.” Ati adds, “The absolute affluence actuality is ablaze and the affiliation to the outdoors.”
Of course, breadth there is a bound budget, there you will acquisition sacrifice. At first, the Walkers envisioned a charred-wood exoteric and a geothermal heating and cooling system, and they anesthetized on some higher-end appliance and finishes. “Sure, I accept some regrets,” Tim says. “There are some architectonics capacity we alone for practical, amount reasons. But we got the capital things right, and that makes all the difference.”
When asked if they accustomed the life-changing home they dreamed of, the simple acknowledgment from both Tim and Kathi is “yes.”
["859.42"]“We got aggregate we asked for. It fits our home and our lives perfectly,” says Tim. “We accede the abode a affiliate of the family, as it’s the alembic and the accomplishments for our lives. It’s a abode of ambush that we attending advanced to abiding to every day. Personally, I ahead spending the blow of my activity here.”
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