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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

A Country Classic Design Matches Varied Interests Of Owners With Ranchlike Location

First Place: New Homes Over 1,800 Square Feet

Mark Mays didn’t coin the phrase “form follows function.”

Credit that catchy design imperative to architect Louis Sullivan and an article he published more than a century ago.

But Mays used the phrase (playfully adding, “You can quote me on that”) in a six-page, single-spaced letter he sent to Spokane architects Gerry Copeland and Nancy McKennon, seeking help in designing and building a country home on 30 acres south of Spokane.

Mays, a clinical psychologist and attorney, provided the architects with a detailed list of his seven-member household’s broad-ranging interests, from wife Paula’s physical therapy practice to the family’s menagerie of pets - two dogs, fours cats, a rabbit, four horses and a Vietnamese pot-belly pig - plus their inventory of motorized toys, including Mark’s ‘48 Jeep and ‘69 Chevy pickup, a boat, personal watercraft and all-terrain vehicles.

“Give us your best thoughts as to what would work for the functions of our family,” Mays encouraged Copeland and McKennon. “Have fun and play with it….”

McKennon, chief designer on the project, borrowed from vernacular farm architecture to fit the home to its rural site. And she organized the home into components - a barn-shaped bedroom wing, a corrugated-steel-clad living space and a weathered-cedar garage wing - to avoid letting the 6,300-square-foot structure overwhelm the landscape.

“So often people insist on putting colonials or stuccos or something out of Southern Living (magazine) on these sites,” McKennon observed. “I wanted to do something that belonged here, and the Mayses gave us the freedom to do it.”

Mark and Paula’s bedroom and the kitchen, living and dining rooms are all on the first floor, so the couple can live primarily on a single level after the children leave.

Meanwhile, one son has a bedroom tower over the kitchen-dining space, and two daughters have separate bedrooms and a bathroom above the parents’ wing. The basement is organized to accommodate college-age children home for holidays and eventually could function as an apartment.

“The design really works for this family,” McKennon said. “He has his office; she has her office. There’s room for everyone to get together, and room for privacy, too.

“It looks like a barn from the outside and functions like a barn inside,” she said. “It’s like a big barn for humans.”

“After a trip to the city, it would be easy to return to this rural setting,” Inland Home Awards juror and North Idaho College administrator Walt Carlson enthused. “This house truly has all the comforts of home to make country living very enjoyable. Interior is nice and homey.”

“A very satisfying solution to the challenge of a large program,” echoed Washington State University architecture professor David Wang. “The design bespeaks of the honesty and simplicity of a vernacular building style which fits in nicely in this region of the country.

“The multiple exterior massings and colors combine to evoke a comfortable sense of community consistent with the clients’ needs.”

Wrote juror and landscape architect Dave Nelson: “Use of different materials and colors … breaks up the long ‘rancher’ look … and gives (the home) the look of an old West street front.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: 2 Color photos