House for Five

A family with three children moved to a small, rural, west Tennessee town where they sought a house filled with light and large windows, and requiring little maintenance.

This house is an exercise in making the most from a little. With a low budget and an owner acting as his own contractor (with no prior experience), the design of this house is intentionally simple, focused on clean detailing, abundant natural light, and a basic structural system of timber framing and one piece of steel.

The footprint of the house forms an “L” shape parti, adding privacy to the rear lawn and deck. The public spaces of the house occupy the long leg of the “L” with large windows opening to both front and back. A master suite is positioned to the northern end while the short leg of the “L” is elevated to a second story, housing kids’ bedrooms, bathrooms, and a small play room. Neighborhood covenants required masonry veneer, thus graphite brick wraps the base of the house and outdoor deck, interrupted only by floor-to-ceiling windows or where the brick gives way to the inside faces of the “L”. Lightweight galvalume siding wraps the roof structure and extrudes vertically to clad the second story, seamlessly integrating the lower and upper volumes.

The house is undeniably contemporary in its response to client demands and site/environmental conditions, yet perfectly at home in its small-town context.