Home design: Modern in the marsh
Raleigh architect Frank Harmon uses steel, pine as high-tech design meets low-country culture
Today’s Home of the Month is reviewed by Geoffrey Barton, a master’s candidate at N.C. State University’s School of Architecture and graduate research assistant with the College of Design’s Home Environments Design Initiative. Home of the Month, a collaboration with the College of Design, shows possibilities for constructing a living space built with homeowners’ living patterns and preferences in mind. Each month we profile a new home, selected by an expert panel, from designs by area architects. The goal: to offer inspiration and knowledge that can be applied to any living space.
While custom-designed homes are often intended to accommodate the lifestyles and hobbies of their owners, it is rare that an architect provides a home that offers the inspiration to expand and renew the homeowner’s interests.
Designed by Raleigh architect Frank Harmon, the Lowcountry House in Charleston, S.C., is just such an exception. The house, designed for an avid bird watcher, features space that flows from inside to out, allowing the routines of daily life to unfold with a constant backdrop of nature.
Ask Harmon what makes this house so special and he is quick to extol the site’s natural beauty. “It’s really about this spectacular view of the salt marsh where you can watch the grasses change from rusty brown to lime green in the spring.”
The site, a sliver of land that looks out onto the Shem Creek salt marsh, was integral to all the project decisions, from the positioning of the house to the detailing of its materials. “The land decided the placement of the house for us,” Harmon says, referring not only to the spectacular view but also to the location of the house on the highest point of the site to keep it safe from flooding.
A drive that once led to a farmhouse on the site takes you under a canopy of Spanish moss-draped live oaks as you approach the house. Rather than disturb such a beautiful site, Harmon designed a home that respected what was already there: the drive, four large live oak trees and all of the salt marsh wildlife — from blue herons to white ibis.
Distinction in details
The house plan places bedrooms on either side of the central living area, allowing maximum privacy without sacrificing communal living space. The shed roof provides space for a balcony along the eastern side of the house, providing space for the client’s large collection of books.
The balcony is not supported by interior columns but is suspended by ties from wood roof beams. This creates a lower ceiling without disrupting the openness of the entrance and living space below. Polygal windows (a material typically found in greenhouses) diffuse the light entering the balcony and give the main living space morning light from above.
The north end of the house contains a workshop area to facilitate another of the client’s hobbies - automobile and boat restoration. Consistent with the rest of the house, the workshop is very open to the outdoors, with a concrete ramp on one side and screened porch on the other.
In contrast to more typical wood-frame constructed houses, the Lowcountry House uses hot-dip galvanized steel columns and laminated Southern yellow pine roof beams (available locally). This efficient structure allows more expansive storefront windows — typically found in commercial buildings, but fairly uncommon in residential applications. The large floor-to-ceiling windows in this house give an expansive view of the marsh.
With an interior space just 20 feet deep at its widest point, the house gives virtually every square foot of living space a view of the salt marsh to the west. This view required an orientation in which the western exposure, with large storefront windows, would make interior spaces inhospitably hot in the summer.
source: http://www.newsobserver.com/105/story/568614.html
