Creating a Contemporary Kansas Homestead Where Town Meets Country
We recently had the pleasure of exploring the design for a new home with a friend who, as it happens, is an accomplished graphic designer and former San Francisco office mate. The challenge posed to us was create a simple, modern, and distinctive home redolent of the humble agrarian buildings dotting the nearby Kansas landscape, while being sensitive to the character and scale of the surrounding community.
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The conversation began with our friend describing her wish to create a modest but innovative and fun yet reverential house in the college town of Lawrence, Kansas. This home would serve as an escape from their hectic Bay Area lives and provide a central location for family gatherings – her sister resides less than 1 mile away and her mother in a nearby town. Additionally, they are committed to being active members of this community and intend for this home to serve as a welcome hub for their friends and neighbors supporting activities from cookouts to corn hole, bake sales to basketball, and holidays to homework.
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Through a series of conversations, emails, shared images, and sketches (and a little whisky) we concluded that a simple, single-story plus loft structure with an attached/detached carport both met the functional needs of the family while respecting the basic building diagram of the neighborhood – one- and two-story structures with garages in front – yet rendered in a unique fashion. In lieu of the vinyl siding, composition shingles and the humble decorative features favored by the neighboring homes, we chose a simple, durable palette of metal, wood and glass, copied almost verbatim from the farm buildings forgotten in this suburban landscape.
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By principal, Morgan Pierce.