On vacations, business trips and even driving around Atlanta, you may have seen “the house.” It’s the home that you dream of owning, but the house may not be on the market, or if it is, it may be out of your price range.
Its architecture and details could serve as a source of inspiration when you are renovating an existing home or building a new house. But using the same or a similar door, or adding just a few columns isn’t the best way to create the look you adore. Instead, understanding the previous architecture and design choices and marrying those with your location, lot and budget can turn your inspiration into reality.
“If you like a feature, you should study it and understand its function. “Why it is there?” said Nabil Hammam, owner of Hammerhead Construction, based in Atlanta. “That would make it more useful for you. You will use it the correct way and make sure you’re not mimicking somebody.”
Paying homage to the original
In Serenbe, a community south of Atlanta, Hammam built a home with a cascading waterfall inspired by famous American architect Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater in Pennsylvania. The architect’s Prairie style was ideal for the organic design of the three-bedroom, three-and-a-half bath home on a wooded property. The 3,700-square-foot home also has a carriage house.
Hammam said it’s important to understand the philosophy and principles behind the work of famous architects like Wright. After you do, you can “borrow” elements from those well-known buildings and homes.
“The biggest secret is not to … think that you’re anywhere close to Frank Lloyd Wright,” he said. “If somebody starts trying to hard, it kind of almost backfires.”
The floating roofs and high placement of the windows of the Serenbe home create a strong connection to Fallingwater. The chimney is prominent in the design of both homes. Hammam emphasized the use of wood inside the home, incorporating cedar siding and copper on the exterior. Even the front entrance is hidden, much like Wright’s designs.
“It teases the eye a little bit,” Hammam said. “You’re looking for the front. Once you work your way through, you get to the front door and the front door is not disappointing in any way.”
Updating your inspiration home
Having the Serenbe home incorporate the look of Fallingwater also helped achieve an efficient use of energy and water.
“Ever since I saw Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater, I just fell in love with it,” Hammam said. “I always wondered, wouldn’t it be cooler if the waterfall is over the house instead of being under it. All along, that was in my mind.”
The homeowners liked the idea of putting water on the roof, although bringing it to reality was a challenge, from the design to the permitting process. The roof needed to be waterproofed so that it wouldn’t leak into the house, and Hammam had to figure out how to get water on the roof.
“There were a lot of people that said, ‘Are you crazy? That’s not going to work,’ ” Hammam said.
The water on the roof cools the house, acting as a natural air conditioner. A water feature captures rain water, which goes into an underground cistern and is pumped into a geothermal pump that cools the water to 65 degrees. The water is re-circulated to the roof, where it cascades three levels and then goes into a stream to irrigate the garden.
“We have different speeds. You could crank it up to be a gushing waterfall or turn it down a little bit,” he said.
Looking back to get your future home
Homeowners should understand what elements make up the style of the home that inspires them, said Ty White, president of Atlanta-based Peachland Homes. After that, make sure that’s still what you like about the home, before starting construction, because the scale of the home, materials, fixtures, floor plan, front door and other elements also have to work together.
“Up front you’ve got to be clear: What is the style, what defines the style and does it really work with what they want from the home?” he said.
For example, a homeowner may see a door on a home in Charleston, but the details that went into the door had a purpose, said Jim Strickland, founder of Historical Concepts, a traditional architecture firm with offices in Atlanta and Peachtree City. Strickland and the partners of Historical Concepts authored the 2012 book, “Coming Home: The Southern Vernacular House” (Rizzoli).
“Even the smallest things had an essence of craftsmanship,” he said.
Homeowners who appreciate local homes by famous Atlanta architects Neel Reid or Philip Trammell Shutze, for example, will want to do more than just create a columned exterior. Instead, the home needs to give a sense of their entire work - and fit with your lifestyle today.
“We really try to find what the client wants for their life, not what we want to impress them with. If it’s a Shutze house, we try to understand the particular house they like. Shutze has a huge range of homes,” Strickland said. “If it’s a shingle house, we try to look back and where the shingle vernacular started and what makes it great.”
The best situation is when you can tour the home that inspired you, or other homes by the architect. If not, then looking at historic photos and drawings are essential to the process, so that homeowners can describe what details they like, when working with an architect and builder.
One of the strongest examples of using a historic home as a precedent is an Atlanta house that captured the look of a circa 1909 neo-classical home in Eufaula, Ala., that the homeowner had admired for years. While the design called for more square footage than the original home, the exterior elevation is nearly identical, with the exception of two wings added on either side, according to Historical Concepts. A second tier of one-story columns above the porch, instead of the colossal, full-height entry columns typically seen on a classical revival-style home is one of the unusual features. The Corinthian columns and pale, creamy brick also are distinguishing elements.
In another project by Historical Concepts, the home was inspired by photographs that the client had taken while on vacation in Marblehead, Mass. The home captured the spirit and essence of the shingle-styled home, after the designers studied the historic architecture of the region and famous turn-of-the-century architecture firms such as McKim, Mead & White, which was known for grand, shingle-style homes in the Northeast (and designed landmarks such as the original Penn Station in New York).
Instead of looking at one element of a blast from the past - such as the columns or the doors – it’s important to consider the greater context, said Andrew Cogar, an architect and partner with Historical Concepts.
“It’s never a direct copy,” he said. “It’s always more of a direct influence.”
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