Small virtues

Residential Architect, July, 2003 by Nigel F. Maynard

In designing this retreat for his family, architect Carson Looney, FAIA, faced a challenge: How do you build a small, affordable, low-maintenance second home that's informal yet elegant, and offers maximum livability? His design solutions yielded a deftly crafted gem whose interior is organized with jewel-box-like efficiency. It's 1,544 square feet, but it lives large along the riverside.

Initially, Looney had an even humbler bauble in mind. "I thought I'd build a really nice screen porch," the principal of Memphis, Tenn.-based Looney Ricks Kiss Architects jokes. "Along the way, the wife and the family's desires were larger than mine, so it turned into a fiver shack and then into a river house."

Looney allowed the Tennessee River site to guide his hand. The screen porch-cum-vacation home is a simple rectangular box covered with a maintenance-free shell of fiber cement and metal. To maximize the view, he positioned the house perpendicular to the river, angled the river-side wall, and raised the home on 18-inch reinforced concrete piers. Columns tame the flood plane while also creating valuable storage space under the house for miscellaneous vacation-home detritus.

A house of this size does not leave much room for frippery and single-task space, so many areas double as sleeping cubbies for overflow visitors. The main living area holds a well-organized kitchen where modest tongue-and-groove pine boards coexist with luxurious granite countertops and high-end appliances. "It's a philosophy we use whether we are working on a builder home at a low price or a home worth 3 million," Looney says. "We try to put our money in the things that you touch and utilize vs. monkey business."

The architect at first envisioned a wall of kitchen cabinets double-stacked from floor to ceiling, but after marking off the placement, he decided upper boxes would visually overpower the room. To make up for the loss of storage, he made full use of the area under the adjacent stair. "Every inch under that stairway was utilized," he says. "By doing that, we didn't need all the wall cabinet." He further pared down the kitchen by specing a 24-inch Aga range and settling on an integrated Sub-Zero refrigerator.

Looney wanted a worry-free place that he could lend to friends, so walls are either painted or natural wood and the floor is ceramic. In retrospect, he is happy with how the house evolved and how he adjusted to it. That's what designing a house like this is all about, he says: "You have to throw away a lot of general conventions when you want to design a house that truly serves your needs and accomplishes everything you want."

project:

High Water, Bath Springs, Tenn.

architect:

Carson Looney, Looney Ricks Kiss Architects, Memphis, Tenn.

general contractor:

Don Stricklin, Stricklin Construction, Decaturville, Tenn.

project size:

1,544 square feet construction cost: $100 per square foot