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house of a different color

Did you ever look at the color scheme on a house and say “What in hell were they thinking”? I’m currently working on a renovation of an older house and am considering an offbeat color scheme.

This particular house is a late 1800s Victorian in an historic designated district. This means we can change very little, architecturally, on the house’s exterior. The outside color scheme, however, is fair game. Therefore, it’s our sole exterior opportunity to make a design mark. I’ve become curious about doing an almost-black gray house with stark white trim. My research (pictured above) has produced some lovely examples of this combination; oddly traditional yet refreshingly contemporary. A perfect color storm.

This led me to recall some of our other projects which boasted more unusual color schemes -the creasote-blackened farm utility shed with cherry-red trim, the fire-engine-red red farm house and the dirt-brown lake cabin with sickly green window sashes. The owners of these projects allowed us to bravely go out on the paint-chart limb. The results were strikingly daring.

We’ll see how my black and white pitch goes….

wall to wall

Recently, I’ve written posts examining the important roles of ceilings and floors in the well appointed room. Today, walls get their due spotlight. The wall plane is by far the most beheld of all room elements (it’s is at eye level, after all). Dressing the wall, however, can go far beyond the drab frock of sheetrock. Here are some examples of where we took the concept of “wall paper” to whole new levels.

Inherently colored plasters (often called “Venetian plaster”) can add a rich, earthiness to a room. It’s surface is polished to a slightly reflective sheen and, since the color the integral to the material, does not require paint.

We like to use flush wood planking in relaxed, casual settings. The nature of the material innately calls out to used for beach cottages, mountain shacks and lake cabins. Whether painted (shown pictured, left) or stained, this masculine treatment almost makes you feel like you’re lounging in a cigar box.

Mention the word “library” and the mind conjures images of a dark, smoky, paneled gentleman’s room. In this library, we desired that atmosphere but we wanted to try to create it in a completely different fashion. We paneled the walls with tobacco colored fabric thus creating an upholstered sanctuary. The sound quality in a quilted room is unlike all others; a hush occurs almost immediately upon entering.

Heavy fabric provides excellent sound attenuation and lives well in screening rooms. This minute, two person TV lounge is enveloped in lush mohair drapery. Thick, heavy curtains were a staple in the cavernous volumes of old Hollywood movie houses. Why couldn’t they add equal drama in a little space? Add a bit of gilt (as in the picture frames) and you’ve got a bit of Bijou right at home.

Often, when we do wood paneled walls, we use them sparingly; they become a backdrop to vignettes. Whether stained or painted, wood paneling can act as a beautiful foil to present staged compositions.

Most traditional wood paneling and wainscoting is of the raised or recessed variety. In our office, we designed a wood wainscot with a fluted texture, like the face of an architectural column. Used in this fashion, this traditional surface method comes across as very modern.

To convey a mood or tell a story, we’ll often bring exterior materials inside. We wanted this breakfast room solarium to feel like an outdoor courtyard so the same rock veneer that clads the outside of this house was invited indoors. A continuous copper water trough at the top of the focal wall creates an intentionally leaky feature.

In a penultimate case of wall adornment, we commissioned artist David Braly to create a mural for the walls in this Italian-inspired dining room. David employed an inspired graphite method that created a subtle, faded, tattoo-like environment.

I hope we’ve inspired you to look at walls in a different way. Save them from the doldrums of the gypsum wall bored.

a fairy tale cottage

“O, to be sure, we laugh less and play less and wear uncomfortable disguises like adults, but beneath the costume is the child we always are, whose needs are simple, whose daily life is still best described by fairy tales.”
― Leo Rosten

This past December, one of our houses appeared in a French design magazine called Maison Chic. It’s a wonderfully quirky house we designed once upon a time in Birmingham, Alabama for a lovely couple who yearned for a storybook English cottage. They were always attracted to those unique 1920s era houses that seem to exist in very town; the ones that look like they jumped off a Hans Christian Anderson page. Romantic childhood illustrations made real. Given this task, we mined the sewing baskets of our imagination and wove them a house.

When the house was eventually photographed, it was, appropriately, a Christmas setting. Since this magazine is not carried in the United States (trust me, I searched) and we just got a copy from the publisher, I thought our blog followers might like to see this holiday spread. If any of our readers also happen to read French, I hope the article is as nice a read as any fairy tale.

be my guest

Last week I spoke about the romance and charm that is the unencumbered outbuilding. To continue this thread of thought, I thought I’d concentrate on a specific type of accessory structure: the guest house. To have a guest cottage on the property is true luxury indeed. It’s like having your own little motor court lodge. Toss the keys to your guest and point to the path. These miniature houses sit picturesque in the landscape. They beckon and welcome, offering grand hospitality but under their own humble roofs.

lounge act

One of the current trends in residential design is the open floor plan. Basically, this is a layout in which all the public spaces in a house open up and flow seamlessly one into another. This arrangement certainly works well with modern family life. It encourages social interaction and eliminates stuffy formal rooms (remember the rooms you were never allowed in as a child, but were forced into service on holidays and you couldn’t wait to escape?). Those dusty, imposing caverns are a thing of a past in the world of the open floor plan. But for the retreating personality, the introvert or the lone reader, feeling comfortable in a vast sea of furniture and tables can be challenging. In the laundry list most people come up with in their program, a small room is often overlooked. We think it’s of utmost importance; sanity demands it. This is why we always try to add a small oasis into the programatic mix when we’re designing a house. The lounge (or “den” as it was once called) serves as a tiny retreat. An architectural hug, good lounges should be warm, enveloping and comforting. It’s waiting arms are where you go to escape the pressures of the modern open floor plan.

moving on

The home of Greg Tankersley and Mary Robin Jurkiewicz originally published in Veranda magazine, September/October 2005.

My family and I are in the process of selling and moving out of the 1914 Beaux Arts estate we’ve called home for the past eleven years. The reasons are twofold: planning for the future and a good dose of architectural ADD (given our history, our attention span is apparently a decade). My wife, who is also an architect and an avid amateur gardener, has been riding the emotional roller coaster of leaving a well worn and beloved nest. In addition to her many talents, she is also a poet. The following is a mourning soul bared, easily identified by anyone who’s suffered a haven loss:

Letting the House go

I’ve cultivated the ground
(I’m still cultivating the ground)
Inspired, by the selling process, to do more:
To cultivate me.

Historical, architectural gem,
Not without shortcomings,
But who isn’t?
It’s time to address mine now.

I’ve sold it in my mind
A hundred times;
Snatched it back just as many,
Ambivalence reigning supreme.

How can I let it go?
In all its compelling beauty,
Further coalesced by compliments
From friends and strangers alike.

But, it’s time to cultivate me.
Big gorgeous home, shared lovingly
With all who’ve entered in…
Been there, done that, check.

And check well done:
Excellent stewards of history we’ve been
Preserving for the next one.
Giving a garden, too, but that’s heartache dealt with another day.

As negotiations slink seriously nigh,
I know I’m ready.
“God Bless This House”
And God bless me.

Mary Robin Jurkiewicz

All photos by Mick Hales
All Content on this Site is the Property of McAlpine Tankersley Architecture. Copyright © 2012 McAlpine Tankersley Architecture, All Rights Reserved Worldwide

I feel pretty

Ask most contemporary architects what they think of decoration in architecture and you’re apt to elicit a diatribe of snobbery. As a matter of fact, the ornate branches of architecture are sometimes treated like a flamboyant uncle at the family reunion: fun to look at it for a bit but not to claim or take seriously. I think, however, that decoration and ornament have a distinct place in the building arts. After all, Architecture’s inspired roots have always been planted in the soils of the natural world. Even the staid classical orders and designs of the Greek and Romans were hymns mused of nature. One need only look around the garden, forest or ocean and know that Mother Nature is hardly a Shaker – she seems to shamelessly revel in the Baroque.

A true piece of Architecture that lacks some type of whimsical beauty is like a room without accessories: coldly bare and lacking something for the eye to caress; these rooms look unused. Similarly, buildings void of even the smallest decorative gesture lack a generous and habitable sensibility. Rooms without accessories look uninhabited and buildings without some sense of decoration look uninhabitable. I dare to mention the word “pretty” in terms of discussing architecture because “pretty” is seen as the F-word of architecture. But I’m complimented when one (of our houses or rooms) is pronounced as pretty; that means the eye of the describer has found something within which pleases the heart.

attic fan

I’ll admit to being an avid attic fan.

Recently, while cleaning out the attic in my 100 year-old house (pictured above) and preparing for an upcoming move, I was reminded how much I love being nestled within the folds of a roof form. There’s something very comforting about residing in the air space that results from the basic structure of shelter. One of my favorite books on architecture, The Poetics of Space, was written by Gaston Bachelard, a French mathematician and philosopher. In his book, he offers a vertical image of the house which is created by the polarity of the attic and basement which denote, for Bachelard, irrationality and rationality respectively. The reason for going up to the attic is that it not only shelters us from the weather but it also makes apparent the whole structure of the house. The attic, for Bachelard, is a metaphor for the clarity of mind and is the place where dreams and imagination reside. The basement, conversely, is the realm of the sub conscience. In the South, basements were often called the “root cellar” which is an apt description since it’s the foundational root of the house.

If the basement is the root of the house, then certainly the attic is its pinnacle. I relish in the idea that the attic can be more than a place to simply store Christmas decorations and forlorn dusty furniture. So live, sleep and relax in the embracing tent of your roof. Its lofty space is the embodiment of the mind of the house, allowing us to literally reside in thoughts, daydreams and notion.

plan views

Phone rings

Richard (our business manager), answers: “Good Morning, McAlpine Tankersley”.

Caller: “Do you guys sell house plans?”

Richard: slams the phone down (not really. actually he’s usually very nice to them).

This scenario happens often. Its as if our entire office’s combined talents, college educations, decades of experience and multiple professional licenses have reduced us to “house plan dealers”. The fact of the matter is, the planning of a house is only the beginning of the architectural process. It’s not just a haphazard shuffle of room sized boxes, mechanical systems and kitchen triangle formulas. The creation of a plan is a careful, precise and deliberate orchestration of a client’s individual life. It’s the art of maneuvering dreams, desires, functions, budget and idiosyncrasies. Oh, and in the end it has to produce something that is three-dimensionally beautiful. It’s sort of like juggling a bowling ball, a peanut and a flaming torch, all the while looking graceful and calm.

The floor plan is really the DNA of the house. It outlines the heart, circulatory system and orifices. Paths resolve, destinations are established and relationships are sturdied. It’s not a dull, formulaic activity; it’s the inspired seed of design. We revel in the creation of a unique plan elevating our client’s day-to-day life.

So, no, we don’t sell house plans. We don’t offer a one-size-fits-all-drive-around-to-the window-please product. Instead, we sell bespoke sanctuaries providing haven from the noisy, hectic world that exists outside your door. We seek to find order in mundane daily home life and resolve it into a graceful, beautiful and celebratory journey.

Try ordering that in the back of a magazine.

Bobby McAlpine’s original sketch for a plan

A section of a developed schematic floor plan with furnishings

porch songs

The best kind of friend is the one you could sit on a porch with, never saying a word, and walk away feeling like that was the best conversation you’ve had – Unknown

The crisp air at the onset of fall is best partaken of and savored in one place – the porch. Traditionally, the porch is the anteroom of the house; an architectural purgatory that is neither the street nor the foyer. The welcome mat of rooms, it’s where you sat in peaceable weather, ready to receive guests. In this fashion, your company could be in your house but not IN your house. In those days, porch sitting was an event in itself; an architectural throne presenting the lord and lady of the manor to the outside world. Or, merely, just a place to shell peas.

In today’s homes, however, the various functions of porches have evolved. They’ve been given the job of outdoor family room, made for lounging, dining and general quiescence. During this transition, they’ve no longer solely relegated to the staid position in front of the house; they adjoin wherever a view, a chair and a cocktail are called for. A staple of the Southern home, the porch is an everyday vacation spot, offering rest, conversation and overall escape from the daily pressures of inside life.

If you’re in want of a break today, shed the laborious mantel of responsibility and go out on the porch for a minute. Wrap yourself in the refreshing fall air. I bet you’ll find yourself refueled and made better.

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