At Home in the Wildgrasses: An Heirloom Missouri Home
Architect Mark Grantham's knowledge and artistry go to work in a home that blends seamlessly into a Missouri hillside.
September/October 2009
By Jessica Kellner
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Bermed into the hillside, the home's back side angles to the ground through a series of terraced organic vegetable gardens.
Photo By Mark Baltzley
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When architect Mark Grantham set out to build a home in rural Missouri, he wanted to create more than just a house—he wanted to use his 30 years of sustainable building knowledge to create an heirloom. The result was Wildgrasses, a 3,200-square-foot home bermed into a hillside that has served as a home—first for the architect and his wife and now for its new homeowners—and as a teaching tool for Grantham’s clients and the community.
“I think a home should have more value than just financial value,” Grantham says. “It should have a personal, nurturing value and kind of an heirloom value. Whether you pass it to your kids or to someone else, you should pass it on with value and be happy someone else will experience living in it.”
The love and skill that went into the home were immediately obvious to Paula and Jason Bellchamber, who bought the house in 2008. “We had two showings on the day we saw Mark’s home,” Jason says. “We saw Mark’s first and were just blown away—floored. So we went to the second house afterward, and it was very nice. If we hadn’t seen Mark’s, we may have put an offer on it. But there was just no comparison.”
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Green from the ground up
The home was constructed using straw bales, giving it strong, breathable walls with an R-55 insulation level. It’s filled with reused materials such as salvaged doors from a burned-down area schoolhouse and a local monastery. And, perhaps most impressive, nearly everything in the home was sourced within 100 miles of the site.
Grantham found local straw bales and concrete, locally quarried landscape stone, trusses manufactured within eight miles of the home and slate from southern Missouri. “The combination of old and new is neat,” Paula says. “Many aspects are contemporary, but Mark also incorporated antique embellishments and reused things from the past.”
Years of experience in residential and commercial design taught Grantham that smart building is about a lot more than choosing low-VOC paint. “All around, I was trying to make an effort not only to build a green home and choose materials that were sustainable, healthy and durable, but to consider the whole process, from the design methods to the end user’s lifestyle,” Grantham says.
He had to think that way when it came to the sewage system. Many of the area’s septic systems were failing because of the clay soil, so Grantham began searching for a better solution. He chose a microbiotic system, which relies on a natural method of processing waste. “Instead of dousing everything with chlorine and trying to kill it all, the natural process encourages bacteria and microorganisms to break down waste,” he says. Strategic plantings finish the filtration process.
Though he built the home to accommodate solar panels, Grantham decided not to install them because they weren’t efficient enough to justify the cost at the time. The Bellchambers plan to install them eventually.
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