Welcome to Different Strokes, a look at unique home design choices that beg for further explanation.

Andrew Rodenburg is obsessed with eyes. But you might be able to guess that from looking at his and his wife, Sarah Rodenburg’s, Bismarck, North Dakota, home from above. The 3,500-square-foot-structure is laid out in a slight curve that opens to a pool area surrounded by circular black decking, then a round patch of turf. It all comes together to look like a literal eyeball. Andrew is an ophthalmologist, and Sarah is an occupational therapist who works with clients who are blind or visually impaired. But those are not just their professions; eyes are the Rodenburgs’ passion, one that directly informed the design of their family residence.

Although the Rodenburgs purchased the property—special for its mature fruit trees, garden vineyard, and proximity to town—about 10 years ago, they didn’t break ground until 2020. By then, they had two preschool-age daughters. Their property was landlocked, and they had to fight with the city—and buy an adjacent property—to build a driveway that made the home accessible from the road. “Even family thought we were crazy,” Sarah says. “But there were things that happened that were very serendipitous. [Andrew] found out the property was owned first by an ophthalmologist. He sold it to another ophthalmologist whom we purchased it from.”

Self-described outdoors people, the Rodenburgs were inspired by the natural landscapes of their native North Dakota. Their partnership with interior designer Jamie Gernert of WYC Designs was crucial to incorporating that and other personal details, including eyes (obviously!), the numbers three and seven, and the terra-cotta colors in the North Dakota Badlands. Gernert also brought in earthy elements like the MushLume Hemi pendants, made out of actual mushroom material, above the kitchen island, and the trio of rattan lights over the dining table that, in a previous life, were baskets from Anthropologie. You might be able to guess the Rodenburgs’ favorite color based on the pops of green peppered throughout the space, like the custom sage Wolf range (that they waited two years for), the minimalist kitchen dining chairs, or the hunter green Eames Lounge chair in the office.

But even before Gernert got involved, the Rodenburgs’ vision was clear, if you’ll pardon the pun; Andrew drew the original concept himself (KGA Studio Architects realized the final design and built the structure), and Sarah designed pieces like the primary bedroom’s integrated nightstands with visible dovetails. Aside from the eye, there’s another notable feature: a tree that was cut down to make way for the aforementioned driveway and is now the centerpiece of the main living area. “It’s funny because people talk about the tree in the house, and I honestly don’t even see it anymore,” Sarah says. “It’s quirky, but it’s normal to us.”

Andrew wanted a passive solar house, so the curved shape made sense. It also paved the way for their unmistakable homage to eyes. We spoke with Andrew and Sarah to learn more about their inspiration and how they brought it all to life. Our conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Dwell: How does your home reflect you guys? And how did you end up with an eye in the front?

Andrew Rodenburg: In trying to reduce our energy costs and things, we wanted to make the house in a certain orientation, and that lent itself to the curve of the house. It made me think of the eyeball shape. Everything makes me think of eyeballs because that’s what I do.

Originally, we wanted to put a firepit in the middle as the pupil, but we had our girls in the meantime. They love swimming and so then it became this hot tub, and how do we fit a square hot tub and make it into a pupil? So we got this black Trex decking to go around it. It stemmed from my obsession with eyeballs. I had the vision of the eye and then coordinated that with our landscaper.

Sarah Rodenburg: In the back mudroom, I came up with this idea for the coats to hang on pegs in the positioning of braille and it says “home.”

There’s a company called Hennepin Made out of Minneapolis, and I just fell in love. They make this light fixture that looks like an eyeball. I wanted to incorporate those somewhere, so we ended up putting it in the powder room. It looks cool when it’s lit up. The bathroom is black and then when you light up those lights, it’s like these little eyeballs looking at you.

AR: With the mirror and the window, we kind of feel like it makes an abstract face like a Picasso.

Dwell: We obviously have to talk about the tree, too.

AR: That driveway we had to create—really, there were only a couple of trees that we had to take down for this whole project. One of them was that oak tree that was sitting in the driveway. I wanted to figure out how to repurpose it.

SR: We felt really bad!

AR: We just didn’t want it to go unused. I thought about making a table out of it, but then I just decided maybe we should take the whole thing and put it in the house. So we dug down and cut the roots and spent over a year just processing it while the house was being built. Then we moved it into the house with a tractor during the construction phase. It’s not supportive at all for the structure, but it’s just decorative, [and] it makes it look like the house was built around it.

Dwell: Talk to me about how you decided where to place it.

SR: I told our architect I just really wanted, with that tree in there, the power of the sun and creating shadows. That’s how he came up with the location for it. It’s still drying. It’s kind of cool. We’ve been living in the home almost exactly a year and it’s still cracking and splitting and separating.

Dwell: Do you have to do anything to maintain it?

AR: I put a polyurethane coating on it after I sanded it. Then we bolted into the concrete floor. I don’t think there will be any maintenance. There’s probably bugs that live in the cracks.

Dwell: What are some other personal elements in your home, besides the materials and of course the tree? How about the custom Jessica Wachter painting in the entryway?

SR: Jess has been a friend of mine since elementary school. We had her do a custom painting for us and the girls got to put their little mark on the edge and we built the wall around it. It’s inset so it fits basically flush on the wall so nobody’s bumping into it because her paint takes years to dry—it’s big globs. It’s cool because we have the glass pivot door and when you come to the front door that’s the first thing you see.

Dwell: You said the house faces south. Is that to get maximum sunlight?

AR: We do have radiant in-floor heating—but if you tolerate temperatures between 65 and 75 [Fahrenheit], we could turn all of our heating and cooling off all year round. Frank Lloyd Wright built this house in the ’40s called the Solar Hemicycle and that’s sort of where that inspiration came. We have rainwater collection—not for drinking—and solar panels.

Dwell: Is the rainwater for irrigation?

AR: It’s for a future garden area that we haven’t built yet.

SR: We are slab on grade. We don’t have a basement, but we created a cold pantry underneath our stairs. It stays 10 to 15 degrees cooler down there. So if there’s ever a tornado, it’s our shelter, but the main purpose of it is preserving food. Once we get this garden going, then we’ll start doing canning and keep the food in there. Our hope is to expand further south, and we’ve planted more fruit trees...but to really make this an urban homestead kind of place.

Dwell: I wouldn’t be surprised if you guys told me you were preppers.

AR: Not as much anymore. I don’t know. My life views have changed a little bit, but I think definitely in the past I would have been on that end of the spectrum.

Top photo by ©Alyssa Rosenheck

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