A Place Between: Japanese and Italian Architecture Inspire This Virginia Home
(Page 2 of 4)
March/April 2003
By Robyn Griggs Lawrence
The abandoned house, which sat solidly in the floodplain, was an obvious candidate for deconstruction. The lot itself, Chris explains, presented “an extraordinary opportunity to do some things differently.” The bucolic views opened up to the south, making the southern walls ideal for massive windows that would allow passive solar gain. In addition, Chris says, “we were on the edge of the downtown area, so the city wasn’t going to be precious as far as sticking to historical context. We could do a modern house. We had freedom to explore.”
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Global influence, local design
In the design stage, which stretched out for eight months as the couple saved money for construction, Allison and Chris made use of their globe-trotting—and a few vernacular lessons.
“Having lived in Italy, in a great upper-level villa where we walked through a stone wall into the garden, we were interested in arriving at the garden first,” Allison explains. “So we designed a building in which you arrive under a bridge, and the two wings of the house frame the view. There’s this Chinese tableau of a pond, the neighbor’s house, above that the church, and above that the hillside. That was really the generating concept for the whole house.”
In a style reminiscent of the old “dog trot” houses, designed to keep preindustrial Southerners cool, the house is split into two parts, with a bridge that spans the entry court. A pivoting louvered gate provides an entry threshold from Chesapeake Street, on the home’s north side. A door to the left leads to the main portion of the house, including the living room, dining room, kitchen, and bedrooms for the couple’s children, eight-year-old Emily and four-year-old Christopher. Across the bridge, which houses a sitting room, is a wing that contains the work studio downstairs and the master bedroom and bathroom above.
Material world
As architects who work for one of the leading green firms in the nation, Allison Ewing and Chris Hays already understood that choosing materials is a give-and-take process that involves consideration of where the material comes from, its manufacturing process, its transportation impacts, and its afterlife.
In addition, Allison points out, the couple had to work within their budget of less than $150 per square foot in construction costs. “Our challenge was to balance the budget with the things we wanted to do on all fronts,” she says.
Craig DuBose, who built the house, explains, “Because of the environmental specifications for materials and structural components, and because these materials are not readily available from building supply companies, I did more research than I would normally do in developing a budget.