At Home With Architects

Filed under: Design, etc, House Tours, Architecture

When it comes time to designing their own homes, what do architects create for themselves?

Architects juggle a myriad of demands with every project: Unusual properties, constrained budgets, difficult contractors, and of course, the client's (sometimes unrealizable) dreams and desires. What happens when the architect is his own client? How does the process change and what can we learn from the homes architects have created for themselves?

Mark Hutker, a Cape Cod-based architect, has built a home for himself and his family that reveals much about an architects' personal project. Hutker's Falmouth, Massachusetts house was the second home he had created for his family: The first was a small house on Martha's Vineyard that he and his wife had kept building onto slowly. "We learned from making a very small house and adding onto it," he says. This experience made him better prepared to design a house from the ground-up for his brood.

When the family moved to the mainland to be closer to Hutker's new Falmouth office and to ease their children's school commute, Hutker asked real estate brokers to show them all of the unusual and un-sellable properties in the area. Hutker figured what he didn't have in finances he could make up for with his creativity, which led him to two side-by-side lots next to a horse farm listed as needing landfill due to the wetlands at one end of the property. "What was advertised as a deficit, I saw as an asset," says Hutker, who left the wetlands alone and built at the one high, dry corner of the lots.

The selection of an unusual lot reflects one major difference between the house Hutker designed for himself and one he might design for a client: Budget. Laughs Hutker, "I could never afford the things I tend to design for my clients. As Oscar Wilde once said, 'Necessity is the mother of invention.'" This penny-wise attitude extended to the house itself, which Hutker built with budget in mind.

Hutker was also able to experiment with techniques that he wouldn't normally try out on a client. For example, the steel beams inside remain unfinished to show the hand of the person who crafted them. Likewise, inexpensive but strong chipboard floor joists wouldn't fly with a client, but stained gray they all but disappear visually in Hutker's home. "I tried to use as many interesting and cost-effective materials to achieve interest, warmth and character," notes Hutker of his approach.

Hutker also built his home with wear-and-tear in mind. "We resisted granite and shiny materials in favor of materials that will actually start to look better over time with use," says Hutker, whose two children were teens when the house was built.

When asked if he would change anything now that he has lived in the house for more than six years, Hutker reveals that he made one major alteration shortly after moving into the home: He added central air conditioning. He also admits he'd make the laundry room a little bigger if he were going to re-design today, proving that not everything is perfect, even in an architect's own abode.

Take a peek at other homes architects have designed for themselves:

A famed example of an architect's home, Philip Johnson's Glass House is a prime example of an architect trying experimental ideas out on his own home. With an all-glass exterior and no interior walls, the Glass House was nothing short of revolutionary when it was completed in 1949. Imagine Johnson trying to convince a client to build a house with virtually no privacy. This modern icon might never have been built!


Back in 1978, before he'd become a "starchitect," Frank Gehry renovated a Santa Monica bungalow for himself and his family. Looking at its deconstructionist exterior you'd never guess that Gehry left much of the Dutch colonial-style home's exterior alone, building his cutting-edge design work around the original house.

Architect Anne Fougeron's San Francisco home remodel added glass walls to allow light into the space creating the feeling of a glass box. Like Hutker and Johnson, Fougeron created a space that took maximum advantage of natural light -- without breaking the bank.

Like many architect, Steven Ehrlich used his own Venice Beach home home as an opportunity to experiment. Large glass doors pivot and slide open on three sides of the house -- effectively dissolving the barrier between indoors and out. Ehrlich also experimented the materials he used, and like Hutker, he was drawn to using raw, honest materials -- like Trex decking in lieu of exterior cladding -- that his clients might not have approved for their own projects.

For more great stories on ShelterPop, don't miss:
My Nook Will Never Replace My Bookshelf
Naked at Home For a Week
The Case Against Cleaning
Always the Writer, Never the Client

Check out this video to learn how to design like an architect!

 

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