Author: Erika Howsare

Stew and Alyce Pollock wanted an architect with environmental cred, but that wasn’t the only thing that drew them to Barbara Gehrung of Energy Positive Architecture. “I liked her style too,” says Stew. 

It was 2013, and the Pollocks were getting set to build a new home on a rural property in Batesville in order to be closer to their daughter and her family. Gehrung had experience with Passive House, the stringent energy-efficiency standard for buildings that originated in her native Germany. And the Pollocks felt she’d be able to deliver a home in the modern, Frank Lloyd Wright-inspired style they desired.

The first big decision was whether to pursue Passive House certification. “It’s a good aspirational goal, but you have to invest a lot to meet that standard in Virginia,” says Stew. “Net-zero”—a different designation that requires buildings produce at least as much energy in a year as they consume—“is achievable with a well-built house and solar panels.”

Aiming for that goal, the Pollocks felt they were doing the right thing for the future. “We have kids. We have grandkids,” says Alyce. “We want to build a house that will outlive us, and them, and still be a good house to live in.”

Passive House methods did inform the design, on which Gehrung’s business partner Mark Graham collaborated, and construction, led by Daniel Ernst of Promethean Homes. A “blanket” of rigid rockwool insulation wraps the house on the outside to minimize thermal bridging (that’s the transfer of heat through wall studs that happens in traditional construction). 

Making a house airtight is one of the primary ways to boost its efficiency. And, the Pollocks say, these techniques also make for a house that’s “super quiet.” Stew adds, “It’s nice to live in a house that doesn’t have cold drafts running through it.”

While Stew was drawn to Wright’s Usonian houses and looked forward to an uncluttered environment, Alyce asked Gehrung “to not make it look like a plain concrete box.” Gehrung accomplished that by providing two covered porches that cut into the house’s basic rectangular footprint. “It makes the inside space and outside profile more interesting,” says Alyce. 

“Porches in Virginia are a really integral part of a house,” says Gehrung. “This house has a warm one facing south for winter or evening use, and a cool one to the north for summer.” Alyce calls the warm porch an “auxiliary living room” and says it’s been handy for socially distanced gatherings.

Creating pleasing interior spaces meant varied ceiling heights and, in the master bedroom, timber-frame elements “to proportion the space,” Gehrung says. Clerestory windows bring in light from different directions as the sun travels through the day. 

“The house is long, but not very wide,” says Alyce. “There’s a wall of windows and a wall of doors, so you can see right through the house. You are always only a couple feet from outside.”

Long, low horizontal lines define the exterior form, along with vertical posts that call to mind concrete slabs turned on end. Gehrung used a combination of Corten steel and heat-treated poplar siding for cladding.

Gehrung says that any modern architect would consider a project like this one “a dream.” Finding a balance between performance and aesthetics, she adds, was the key to the design process, and Passive House tools helped her achieve that goal.

The Pollocks say they’re more than happy on both counts. “We feel very connected to the world,” says Stew. “You think sometimes of an energy-efficient house as a block with little tiny windows. But this is a very open, airy space.”

A house built just before World War II might be replete with period charm, but it’s not necessarily geared toward the needs of a young family. Honoring that earlier era, while executing a major update, was Karen Turner’s charge in a recent project. “It’s an old house in a beautiful established neighborhood,” she says. “The clients wanted to give the house a more modern, fresh edge”—the aesthetics that would speak to their own taste, and allow their family life to function smoothly.

Making this happen was a team effort. While a larger renovation took place elsewhere in the house, Turner joined forces with many of Charlottesville’s most expert craftspeople and suppliers to make the kitchen come together. Shelter Associates served as builders, and local company Gaston & Wyatt crafted cabinets.

The first big step was to rethink how the kitchen connected to other nearby rooms. “We opened two big four-foot openings into what was the dining room, and is now a family room with a fireplace,” says Turner. That lets young children circulate in and out of the kitchen, still within sight and earshot. “It made it feel much more modern,” says Turner.

Turner says she used the same approach to solving the layout puzzle for this kitchen that’s worked for her countless times before—it’s all about predicting people’s patterns. “I tackle every project with a cooking zone and a cleanup zone. And if you give guests a place to go where they feel like they’re part of the event, they will go there.”

In this case, the cooking zone would be anchored by a custom seven-burner LaCanche range with gas oven, electric convection oven, and warming oven. “The range really needed a little bit of glamour above it so it didn’t just feel like it was this oddity in the room, so we made the finish on the hood highly glossed,” says Turner, who sourced the custom hood from Indiana’s Vogler Metalworks.

Behind the island, which is much larger than the previous one, a cook has protected access to prep sink, range, and fridge. Non-cooks can reach the fridge without infringing on the action. “It’s also kind of nice having the fridge near the breakfast table,” she says. “Inevitably you need more milk, or this or that.”

As for the cleanup zone, it presented an unusual challenge in that it’s located along the front wall of the house. Turner and her clients wanted to preserve the house’s historic façade. So, even though the bottoms of the windows extended below countertop height, no one wanted to alter them. Solution: install mirrors on the back of the cabinets, to reflect landscaping plants outside and hide the cabinetry. “Mike Oliva provided the stone,” says Turner, referring to the Olympian white marble countertops sourced from Richard A. Oliva & Sons, “and that installation was very precise. That definitely required some crafting on his part.”

Guests naturally gravitate toward the stools at the island, and a wall of V-groove paneling behind them, with room for artwork instead of cabinetry, helps define their space as a sitting area rather than a work zone.

The clients’ key words for the way they wanted their kitchen to feel, Turner says, were “fresh, clean, and crisp.” That drove the choice of rift-grade white oak for the cabinetry. “I’ve been enjoying working with it recently; it’s so uncomplicated, and really calming,” Turner says. A white finish on the outer-wall cabinetry contrasts with the island, where the team created a custom stain to suggest a bleached look. This choice is practical in an area where people will be on and off stools all the time: Stained wood will hold up better than paint.

Flat subway tile, sourced from Sarisand, forms the backsplash, while the butler’s pantry features penny-round tile. Glass cabinet doors and dark navy-blue hues gives the pantry a traditional, “jewel-box” feel, says Turner, along with a small brass sink. Unlacquered brass hardware from Armac Martin on all cabinetry, and unlacquered brass faucets from Kallista, harken to the original brass doorknobs throughout the house.

“I love this kitchen,” says Turner. “It fits my rules, which are that it needs to belong to the house and to the client. I think it’s very sophisticated.”

When Kelley and Steve Sobell bought their house at Bundoran Farm in 2017, they took on a project that was somewhere between new construction and renovation. Situated south of town off Route 29, Bundoran, first developed by Qroe in 2006, is made up of high-end houses on large lots, most with big views of rolling farmland and mountains. The Sobells’ home is no exception, but it had a somewhat different history.

Begun as a spec house based on Southern Living plans, the house had only been partially constructed when the housing market crashed in 2008. For years, it sat unfinished. The Sobells, who’d first gotten to know the Charlottesville area during Steve’s college years, were living in eastern Texas when their oldest son entered UVA in 2015. Within a couple of years, they’d made the decision to relocate to Virginia, and had visited the Bundoran house, still an incomplete shell, while viewing properties.

They loved the site, but were unsure about the house. “There were things about the house that didn’t fit our lifestyle,” says Kelley. Steve puts it like this: “The shell of the house was 80 percent the way we would like it. There were some things where you had to have some vision.” 

Still, on a turbulent August day when Hurricane Harvey was bearing down on Houston, the Sobells decided to put in a bid. “The view is amazing,” says Kelley. Everything else, they figured, could be customized.

Working with contractor Rob Johnson and his company, Green Mountain Construction, the Sobells embarked on a collaborative reimagining of the unfinished plans. Priority one: Take better advantage of those views. Along the back of the house, for example, there were small windows and a standard door. “Now we have a huge slider in the back, which opens up the whole wall to the view,” says Kelley.

The team, which also included Charlottesville builder Jeff Easter, improved flow through the house by reallocating some of the spaces from their original locations in the Southern Living plans. “It was a very collaborative process,” says Johnson. “Kelley and Steve were heavily involved. They had a clear vision as to spaces they wanted, and Jeff helped to provide that overall concept.” Interior designer Wendi Smith and landscape architect Anne Pray were also part of the ongoing back-and-forth as the house took shape.

The kitchen moved to an entirely new spot, and a pantry gained enough functionality to serve as a “secondary kitchen”—big enough for caterers to work from during a party, leaving the main kitchen open to guests. This auxiliary kitchen contains a small sink, coffee station, and two drink drawers to keep things less cluttered elsewhere, and it closes off with sliding reclaimed-wood doors. In the main kitchen, aiming for a clean, farmhouse-influenced look, the Sobells chose quartz countertops, white cabinets, and a wood accent on the vent hood.

The new plans also called for a larger master suite, beefing up the closets in particular. A luxurious marble-tiled master bathroom with a huge window offers beautiful views from the shower and soaking tub. In the bedroom itself is one of the Sobells’ and Johnson’s favorite touches: a tray ceiling faced in reclaimed oak. “It just gives the whole bedroom a feel like you’re in the woods,” says Kelley. Similar wood frames a TV niche and is used in select spots throughout the property, providing continuity.

While the Sobells designed their new home for aging in place—keeping the master suite, kitchen, and main living areas all close together on one floor—they also thought ahead to the needs of their two young adult sons, as well as their sons’ friends and future families. Two upstairs bedrooms are arranged as suites, with their own bathrooms for maximum privacy. “We wanted everybody to come and gather at our house, and just have this level of comfort and privacy in your own little suite,” says Kelley.

A separate suite over the garage, referred to as the “bunk room,” offers large built-in bunk beds, a lounge area and bathroom. “We wanted our son’s friends to fill that place up when they come back and go to different events here at UVA,” says Kelley. “And we wanted a fun place for grandchildren to be able to stay.” 

Johnson says the details of that above-garage suite presented enjoyable challenges for him as a builder. “There’s an upstairs shower that hugs the bottom of some interesting rooflines. We wrapped the tile around it, and found some strategic spots to tuck some niches,” he says. More reclaimed wood and metal pipes form a ladder system for the upper bunk.

When family and friends do gather, inviting outdoor spaces draw them into the landscape. A rear screened porch made of bluestone features an outdoor fireplace, and bluestone pavers lead downhill on a diagonal to a reclaimed-soapstone firepit. Both spaces, says Kelley, have seen frequent use since the Sobells moved in.

“We use it all the time,” says Kelley. “The woods and view and cows and mountains, it’s sort of a religious thing for us.”

The new tasting room and event space of Potter’s Craft Cider is not “new” at all; it’s a building layered with history and memory. When Jeannette Andamasaris, of Studio Figure, first began work on renovation for Potter’s, she actually encountered a moment from her own past. “I had been there before when it was a home,” she says. “A friend of mine rented a house on the property and took me on a tour through the main house.”

She remembered an artistic, even eccentric atmosphere: a large koi pond, and Gaudiesque forms made of plaster inside the main house. These were marks of the decades when Jim Hagan, the sculptor who made the black silhouette figures installed on the Downtown Mall, had lived there with his family, making loads of art and nurturing a vibrant social scene. The 1920s stone building, known as Neve Hall, had previously served as a church, and the story of the property is connected with a number of notable figures of Albemarle history.

“There was this palimpsest of paint and plaster, religions, and of course an artist and all of his works,” says Nick Brinen, co-founder of Studio Figure. “We were talking about it as if it was this living thing.”

Brinen calls this “empathy for the object”—almost as though the building were a kind of being. The team embarked on a slow process of careful dismantling, and observation of the building itself, as the basis of the design process. “What’s interesting about this project versus many of the others we do, where we’re trying to add in and build it up,” says Andamasaris, “on this one we were slowly peeling away the layers.” 

The granite building had a plaster interior in need of repair, but the idea of re-plastering the entire interior seemed heavy-handed given that the exposed stone, too, had an intrinsic beauty. Instead, the team began to think about allowing an imperfect, layered look to take shape organically. “We would walk around and stare, and put tape on weird rough edges we wanted to keep,” says Brinen, adding that architectural software, as powerful as it is, “could never catch these moments.”

In form, the structure comprises two wings, which Potter’s owners Dan Potter and Tim Edmond wanted to use as a public tasting room and an event space. “Between the two wings was a bearing wall of granite, with some rough openings,” Brinen explains. Expanding those openings made for a functionality in which private events can be seen, but not intruded on, by members of the public who have dropped in for a tasting. “When it is open to the public, people just flow through,” he says.

The largest space—the “south hall”—had previously been divided into two stories. Removing the second floor revealed the two-story fireplace flue and inspired Andamasaris and Brinen to add timber trusses for structural support. “It was exposing something magnificent that was already there,” Andamasaris says.

Bringing in light was a major goal. There was one existing skylight—inviting a dramatic sunbeam into the large space of the hall—and it inspired a whole series of skylights, one in every structural bay, based on the proportions of the original.

The interior design developed organically too: It started with a vision on the part of Potter and Edmond of a French country vineyard. Through time and conversation, that idea evolved to an aesthetic based on Parisian cafés and natural materials. 

Completed in 2019, the project won Studio Figure an AIA Virginia Merit Award for Interior Design. Jurors seem to have sensed Andamasaris’ and Brinen’s thoughtful, patient approach. “Instead of tearing things down,” the award citation reads, “the designers showed a balanced restraint.”