Sometimes, choosing an architect isn’t just business; it’s personal. That’s how Emily Umberger and Pradeep Rajagopalan felt when they met the folks at Wolf Ackerman in 2005. “We really got along with those guys personally,” said Rajagopalan—crucial when embarking on any project, but especially the design and construction of a new house.
The feeling was mutual, which allowed clients and architects alike to undertake a design process that would push Wolf Ackerman “away from our comfort zone,” as Fred Wolf said. Known for modernist work, the firm was challenged in this case to design an outwardly traditional home. Trolling the Wolf Ackerman website, Umberger remembered, she was attracted to the cleanness of the modernist work, “and could imagine it as a farmhouse.” Her husband recalls wanting a home that was “simple, classic, and efficient in terms of space.”
Certainly, the result looks, at first glance, like many other Virginia farmhouses: a white clapboard structure with a wide front porch and a standing-seam metal roof. Yet it reveals its contemporary origins both in details and in broad strokes. “We looked for opportunities to open it up and simplify details,” said Wolf.
Modern moves
From the rear of the house, it’s perfectly clear that this place was built in 2007 rather than a century earlier. The L-shaped house—its secondary wing housing the master suite—wraps around a sharply defined flat grassy terrace, elevated above the natural slope of the land and held in place by a stucco and bluestone retaining wall.
“We tried to take the simple farmhouse and separate it from the wing that is the master suite,” said Wolf. “You get that L-shaped composition but also still read what would have been a more traditional volume, which is a simple long bar.”
Modern landscape design—a long, shallow bluestone porch, and an ipe deck punctured by four gingko trees that blaze yellow every November—offsets classic farmhouse details, like the clapboard siding and two-over-two windows.
The central hallway is another place that seamlessly melds old and new. Upon entering the front door (painted red for a pop of color), one confronts a sightline straight through the house to the back yard. “It’s a really clean, simple, generous central hall,” said Wolf. “It’s almost a room in itself.” Articulated by an alternating rhythm of doorways, built-in seats and shelves, and sections of wall where mirrors and benches can be placed, the hallway packs in considerable functionality. Yet it lacks one element key to the historic farmhouse entry.
“I was bound and determined not to have the walk-in staircase,” said Umberger. Instead of the familiar grand stair within the hallway, this house tucks away the steps and keeps the second floor extra private. “You see the upstairs when you arrive at the house, but it’s a discrete piece that is very private,” said Wolf. “I think that’s very different than more traditional farm homes where the stair is typically connected to the entry sequence.”
Lit up
In fact, little about the house’s layout is traditional. The kitchen occupies pride of place while the dining room is downplayed. The master suite is separated from the main volume by “a gasket, or intentional break,” Wolf said, “so that the master suite works more like a pavilion at the end of the lawn.” (Within the “gasket” is a neat and tidy bar with a soapstone countertop.) And the exercise room and media room—or Duke room, as the family calls it, after Rajagopalan’s sports viewing habits—have their own building entirely, a “cottage” across the deck from the main house.
Like many homes designed by modernists, this farmhouse also makes conscientious use of sightlines and natural light to make life within as well-lit and integrated as possible. Along its long axis, doors and windows are aligned from end to end, pulling rooms into one another and creating a sense of unity that plays against the division of spaces. The alignment even extends across the deck to the standalone cottage.
Doors and windows are also used to create compositions, recalling the symmetry of traditional farmhouses. Take the living room, for example: two doorways connect it to the central hall, while two others mirror those and lead outside to the screened porch. Between them, a stone chimney serves back-to-back fireplaces both indoors and out. A final doorway from the living room affords a view down the hallway to the master suite, which itself displays symmetry in the placement of closets and bathrooms.
Wolf Ackerman kept the materials palette understated and clean. In the kitchen, for example, heart pine floors warm up white cabinets and Carrara marble countertops. Through large south-facing windows, sunlight provides the major decoration. “The light in here is pretty happy,” said Umberger.
Bathrooms provide moments of saturated color. The master bathroom, for one, is done in small green tiles that pull together three sections (the central shower stall can be entered on either side from identical toilet-and-sink spaces).
Upstairs, two rooms for the couple’s 7- and 5-year-old children feature murals by local artist Mike Clark, and open onto a large hallway that functions as a playroom, housing an easel, an overstuffed chair, and a natural history collection housed in glass vials.
Enlivened by family photos and the kids’ handmade treasures, the house feels both of-the-moment and, in the best way, universally familiar.
The breakdown
Architect: Wolf Ackerman
Builder: Hale & White General Contractors
Square footage: 4,200
Structural system: Masonry foundation; wood frame
Exterior materials: Wood clapboard siding, stone veneer
Interior finishes: Heart pine floors, painted wood panelling
Roof materials: Standing seam galvalume
Window system: Jeld-Wen windows and doors
Mechanical systems: Forced air
Millwork/craftsman: Albion Cabinets & Stairs