Project Description
2008 RADA
Custom / More Than 3,500 Square Feet / Grand
Asked to design a home around a client’s art collection, Elliott + Associates Architects also made the outdoors a dominant and ever-changing part of the installation. The team accomplished it with a long, linear house that seems to push up from the ground. Its mild steel skin was sprayed with salt water during construction so it would corrode in a uniform way, blending with the land’s deep-red soil. “I love the way it reaches out into the landscape. It looks like a home even though it has museum-quality art, and that’s a fine line,” said one judge.
Rand Elliot, FAIA, agrees the challenge was to make the house feel domestic and comfortable but also showcase the art. “Scale was really important—determining the correct proportion of the room to accept the art,” he says. The plan consists of a series of spaces that expand and contract as one moves through, framing the art and the landscape. One of the house’s covered indentations holds a surprise garden made from ground recycled glass. “Critters rearrange it, and then it gets raked and piled up,” he explains.
The judges appreciated that the house was not about bravado, but about texture and connection to the land.