This Design Really Cooks A Glorious Kitchen Was The Starting Point For This Creative Rural Home
Merit Award: New Homes Over 1,800 Square Feet
This house began with a handsome cook stove.
The clients were attracted to a commercial-looking stainless-steel range and oven because it reflected their mutual devotion to gourmet cooking.
Of course, they needed a suitable kitchen to surround the stove. And an elegant dining room in which to entertain and enjoy meals.
And, of course, a bedroom would be nice.
And a library that could double as a guest room.
And a separate apartment for the husband’s mother.
The kitchen designer referred the clients to Spokane architect Sam Rodell.
Rodell considered the clients’ needs and studied their 10-acre rural site. “These two sources provide the basis for every element of our design effort,” the architect wrote in his Inland Northwest Home Awards entry. “If we listen closely enough - to the land, and to our clients - our task is greatly simplified.”
Rodell’s solution was a compact, 2,400-square-foot assemblage of cinderblock towers and white, barrel-roofed elements that resemble a cross between Le Corbusier’s Notre-Dame-du-Haut chapel and a dairy farm.
Rodell’s design welcomes morning sun through the eastern facade, and minimizes the separation between indoors and out by continuing the living-room tile past the glass wall and onto the back deck.
But the harsher western sun must fight its way through small, seemingly arbitrary holes punched in the front facade. The effect maintains privacy while allowing afternoon illumination and then at night creates a playful “star field” on the exterior wall.
The bowed roof lines echo the rolling landscape surrounding the site. And while the detail is unusual here, Rodell explained that “the path of water has been carefully thought through. There’s no place where the water doesn’t know what to do next - it’s very straightforward that way.”
Spokane Art School director and Inland Northwest Home Awards juror Sue Ellen Heflin commented, “The perforated wall on the entry side is lovely lit in the evening photos - serving as a mimic of the starry sky and as a warm welcoming beacon.”
Washington State University architecture professor and fellow juror David Wang championed the Modernist design during the selection process, but not without reservation.
He wrote: “This project is satisfying and troublesome at the same time.”
He described the home as “a jewel nestled in a well-manipulated natural setting” but questioned whether the design makes a statement about the power of money to impose clients’ will on a site rather than trying to live comfortably within given natural restraints.
, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color photo