Architecture
It Takes a Village: 2 Homes Made of Multiple Structures
Separate buildings join in style and intention in these home bases, showing that sometimes more is just right
While most people want to build a home that is all under one roof, there are times when building the home as a series of connected or freestanding pavilions is desirable. Maybe the home serves multiple generations or must accommodate an ever-changing mix of family members. Or maybe the home grows over time, so that a home expansion is a new pavilion rather than just an addition.
Here are two homes that have been created to resemble small villages rather than being monolithic structures. While both have their roots set deeply in their respective locales, coastal Maine and Piedmont, Virginia, both take a decidedly modern approach to family living, with the best of both the traditional and the modern, the individual and the family.
Here are two homes that have been created to resemble small villages rather than being monolithic structures. While both have their roots set deeply in their respective locales, coastal Maine and Piedmont, Virginia, both take a decidedly modern approach to family living, with the best of both the traditional and the modern, the individual and the family.
The first home is in coastal Maine and resembles, on approach, a small Maine fishing village. From the waterside the home resembles a fishing village so much that it wouldn't be a surprise to see locals pull up in a boat to wander around, procuring a fresh lobster in the process.
From the roadside the home clearly shows off its Maine heritage, with traditional gable roofs, wood shake siding and roofing, and soft grays and browns that are, in spirit if not in fact, the result of that weathering that can occur only in Maine.
Each freestanding pavilion is a simple, gable-shaped structure that features small windows and a taut skin to withstand the bitter-cold Maine winters.
And while each structure is independent from its neighbors, there is an urbanity to their arrangement, just like one finds in the best of Maine's small towns. A consistent material and color palette as well as a consistency in detail and form ensure that the entire "village" is one.
The interiors are where the expression of modernity really takes hold. Open floor plans, tall ceilings and large expanses of glass to view the water from are where this home separates itself from the traditional.
Traveling down the Eastern Seaboard a few hundred miles is where we come across the second home that's been created as a small community. But in this case, a rural Virginia home, the design was inspired by local farming estates.
It's a tightly knit grouping of pavilions that look like they could have been built over time. The main building mass is unmistakable, with its large chimney and dominant central position, and the structures are arranged in a hierarchical order that is unmistakable.
While the arrangement and forms of the structures are, like the home's Maine cousin, steeped in tradition, there's no mistaking that this house belongs to our century. The materials, crisp detailing and simplicity of it are completely modern.
And that modernity is taken inside, where an open plan that enables a casual 21st-century lifestyle is to be found.
Light-filled volumes of space replace the traditional low ceiling.