2003 Custom Home Design Awards

Custom Home, Sept-Oct, 2003 by Meghan Drueding, Shelley D. Hutchins, Bruce D. Snider

Entrant/Architect: House House Architects, San Francisco; Builder: Innovation Builders, Emeryville, Calif.; Landscape architect: Terra Design Group, Sausalito, Calif.; Interior designer: Brukoff Design Associates, Sausalito; Living space: 4,000 square feet; Site: 0.75 acre; Construction cost: Withheld; Photographer: Tom Rider Architectural Photography. * For product information see page 118.

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Merit Award

Custom Kitchen Telluride, Colo., Residence

It's tough to give an award for a single outstanding room and not wonder about the rest of the house. That was especially true in the case of this Telluride, Colo., kitchen, whose complex geometry and arresting combination of materials left our judges anxious to know more. Playing it straight, we waited until alter presenting the awards to ask project architect Larry Yaw for a bit of context.

Because the house sits on an exposed alpine meadow site, Yaw says, "We had to create outdoor rooms." The building's angular shell is ringed with what he calls "eddy spaces;' sheltered nooks that enjoy both privacy and open views of the surrounding peaks. Yaw applied the same scheme inside the house, with a clearly defined kitchen that remains open to the flow of the house around it. A high, curved wall of hand-stained concrete and a low wall of gunmetal steel topped with a walnut counter conceal the nitty-gritty kitchen work without cutting off visual contact from the adjacent living and dining morns.

Surfaces that flow into the kitchen from those spaces--a limestone floor, board-on-board ceiling, and a wall paneled in standing-seam copper--connect the room with the larger volume around it. Precast concrete countertops, walnut cabinets, and a range and hood in dark patinaed copper further the very unkitchenlike feeling. Our judges were struck by the room's bold geometry and creative combination of materials, which they called "rich" and "unexpected." Wait until they see the rest of the house.--B.D.S.

Entrant/Architect: Cottle Graybeal Yaw Architects, Basalt, Colo.; Buidler: James Hughes Construction, Telluride, Colo.; Landscape architect: Kristen Surette, Telluride; Interior designer: Stuido Frank, Telluride; Living space (kitchen): 375 square feet; Site: 3.27 acres; Construction cost (house): $421 a square foot; Photographer: David Marlow. * For product information see page 118.

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Grand Award

Custom Home 3,000 to 5,000 Square Feet Horseshoe Bay, Texas, Residence

In planning this Texas vacation home, architect Rick Archer says, his clients asked for a "surprise house." By all available evidence, that is exactly what they got. Certainly the neighbors in this architecturally conservative lakeside development were taken aback, and first-time visitors are bound to get more than they expect. Our judges were surprised, too. In a good way.

Approached from the courtyard, the house presents a facade of Texas sandstone, broken only by an entry that is something between a garden gate and a front door Inside, things quickly become very interesting. Conditioned spaces are clustered in three pavilions linked by a covered, open-air circulation spine. Because the lot fronts on a man-made lake where no shoreline setback applies, Archer made the house itself the shoreline. The circulation spine opens on a stone patio with staircases that descend directly into the water. Sheltered parking includes not only a garage, but also a two-bay motor-in boathouse.