On 2.25 acres in the pastoral landscape of Milton, Georgia, the Yonson Residence is a true modern farmhouse – blending essential farmhouse style with a modern vision for a unique result that is a natural evolution of the setting’s horse farm heritage.
The 4,652-square-foot residence sits 250 feet from the road on a shared gravel drive surrounded by traditional four-rail fencing. Mixed exterior materials give the house definition and depth, lending the established feel of a structure built over time. Vertical cedar evokes a barn character in the garage, an important view from the main approach.
Wide porches and a U-shaped plan facilitate indoor/outdoor connections in spectacular style. A central courtyard opens freely into the home via a glass garage door, which opens the kitchen’s rear wall to the porch beyond. The interior is an eclectic yet intentional marriage of farmhouse, in reclaimed beams and white shiplap, with modern industrial, in concrete plaster and metal, for a compelling modern interpretation of farmhouse life.
This traditional country home was inspired by the works of McKim, Mead and White and Sir Edwin Lutyens, with a palette of materials suggesting a modern-American aesthetic. Classical details, such as the paired entry columns with stone capitals and painted brick shafts, are tempered by more contemporary elements. The grandly-scaled field room, for example, with clean lines punctuated only by floor to ceiling windows, is a study of proportion and restraint.
The core was designed for social use, with a gracious entry gallery leading into a grand dining room. From here, the home extends outward to more intimate spaces. In the western wing, the sitting room and field room provide views across the surrounding meadows and farmland. The opposite side of the home includes rooms designed for daily use; a family kitchen and casual dining area supported by a commercial-grade chef’s kitchen and pantry.
Upstairs is the master suite, complete with a dressing room, sitting room, his/her offices, and a private rooftop terrace. The opposite wing contains multiple guest suites. The lower level houses a viewing room, wine cellar, game room, gym, and sauna.
Adjacent to the home’s public arrival court, a porte-cochère leads to a private auto court and carriage house. Hidden just beyond, an outdoor pool and spa are cradled between lush landscaping, a shade trellis, and an open-air pool house. A sport court is cleverly concealed behind a landscape screen.
The architectural concept for this home is tied to its location and the history and traditions of place. Between New Orleans and Houston, upriver from the Gulf of Mexico, sits historic Lake Charles, Louisiana. First settled in the late 19th century, the town flourished due to abundant forests of cypress and pine and sawmills that supplied lumber throughout the South and, eventually, the American West. By the 1890s, this prosperity along with the combination of natural and human resources inevitably led to the construction of fine homes, many of which still stand today in a 40-block area known as the Charpentier Historic District. Here, carpenters took on the role of architect and craftsman, showcasing their artistic and technical prowess through elaborate detailing, inside and out, executed with native pine.
This rich heritage provided ample inspiration for the design of Bayou Traditional, a 6,000 s.f. home in an emerging Traditional Neighborhood Development that celebrates the heritage and history of Lake Charles and the Southwest Louisiana region. The clients, lifelong Louisianans, wanted to create an heirloom home, one that they would age in and eventually pass down to future generations. Equally important, they wanted the home’s legacy to be one of stewardship, reflecting upon Lake Charles’ historic character and extending its lineage of vernacular architecture. Honoring traditions established by the region’s early carpenters who juxtaposed formality and simplicity, the design team detailed the interiors by layering an elegant cornice and trim upon horizontal pine boards. The overall design concept incorporates elements of Creole architecture with classical scale and proportion, and native materials with modern building practices, resulting in a traditional raised cottage that commemorates the past while embracing the future.
For a decade, the owners of this large estate near Charleston focused on stewardship, undertaking conservation projects to preserve sensitive river habitat. They then turned to the creation of a home, one that would be fitting of the land and place. Yet, for this site with a long and complex history, they envisioned a home that would be more about welcome and ease than impressions or tradition. Weaving a narrative of generational additions and adaptive reuse, the architect layered multiple moments of invented history by deconstructing the residence into three separate structures (connected only by outdoor ‘hallways’).
The centerpiece is the grand pavilion, its great hall, river-facing storytelling room and kitchen all scaled for entertaining. This hub of an active family and social life, however, was intentionally designed without sleeping quarters. These can be found in two subordinate brick ‘outbuildings’: one a gracious owners’ suite, the other two guest suites. The three pavilions frame a traditional courtyard garden, striking a first impression of ‘approachable classicism’. In contrast to the traditional front façade, the rear expresses a more contemporary layer of history. Behind the Greek Doric columns that once may have framed a river-facing veranda, a wall of steel and glass floats from end-to-end as a modern counterpoint. By mixing the high style of 19th-century Greek Revival with moments of vernacular inspiration, the architect created a home that feels formal and informal at once, its authenticity derived from scale and proportion and the implied passage of time.
The owners’ love of France inspired this Norman-style residence in Atlanta. Large, mullioned windows and archways lighten the massing and update the classical style. The three gables, turret and porte-cochère provide a visual progression to the front of the home, which is at the crest of the four-acre property. This contemporary interpretation of time-honored French architecture continues in the interior, which is open and light-filled with an emphasis on the flow and connectivity between rooms.
The interior architecture program is based on two cross axes. The entry axis leads from the foyer to the dramatic, two-story stair hall, accessing the lower and upper floors. A cross-axis through the entry on the front side, unites the library, foyer, music room and dining room. An interior gallery connects to less-formal spaces—kitchen, breakfast room and family room with adjoining loggia. The center mass is flanked by one-story wings for the master bedroom suite and a mudroom leading to the porte-cochère.
The arrangement conceals two garages and a storage area in the back. Three bays project from the rear of the residence and a pool cabana opens to a spacious terrace with oval pool. Doric columns and pilasters, a stately fireplace and vaulted ceiling imbue a classical formality to the loggia. Materials used, including the metal roof over the pool cabana and breakfast room, were selected to relax the overall sensibility from this perspective.
The owners of this English Manor-style residence wanted a large home that would graciously accommodate their children and grandchildren for extended visits, with a centralized primary living area to suit the couple regardless of guests. Another goal in the design of the home was to frame views of the landscape, including a golf course on one side of the property and a picturesque stream and meadow on the other. The plan is oriented with a long central spine running vertically so the front façade belies the residence’s actual 9,000 sf size.
A porte cochère obscures immediate views of the residence, which is set amid 3.6 acres at the end of a long, scenic drive. Visitors arrive in an enclosed motor court, evoking the estates of 19th and early 20th-century rural England. Though only two stories, tall gables, which have vents at the attic level, accentuate the height and stature of the residence and the exterior of weathered granite, tumbled brick, and black slate imparts a storied bearing.
The architecture incorporates many of the hallmarks of Sir Edwin Luytens’ neo-classical architecture, including a symmetrical front façade, double-height great room, and numerous bay windows and barrel-vaulted vestibules. A spacious, central living room offers ample space for separate activity zones and large gatherings and connects directly to a vaulted loggia and courtyard. Guest bedrooms extend behind and above the main quarters, with a fifth bedroom in a guest tower above a garage.
In the summer of 2018, our clients approached us, having just purchased a lot in the Kennebec development at Lake Martin, AL. They selected a spectacular property that offered opportunities to protect their privacy from development by anticipating the location of future homes on adjacent lots and strategically planning for undisturbed tree buffers.
Kennebec’s extensive guidelines provided guardrails to avoid the practice of total tree removal and dropping towering structures on the lake. The neighborhood also embraced the goal of sustaining as much of the natural environment as possible, mandating Architects and Builders to design and build with a scalpel, as opposed to an axe, so views were achieved without unnecessary destruction of the site.
The story unfolded as we dove into developing a solution large enough to accommodate a family of seven while being sensitive to satisfy the design guidelines that asked for low-slung homes nestled into the woods in harmony with their surroundings.
We started the design process with a thorough site analysis and heightened sensitivity toward material selection. The client’s direct and straightforward goals, to first make a place where their expanding family and friends could gather, and second, accommodate different scales of entertaining, from just the immediate family, to “bringing a friend” weekends, were kept in the forefront of our design consciousness.
