”We`re ready: Show us more surprises,” said a visitor standing in the central space of the New American Home in suburban Atlanta.
His tone as he spoke to the model acting as tour guide was pitched somewhere between bedazzlement and the grim determination of a soldier about to make a charge from the trenches. A nervous chuckle rippled through the rest of the tour group.
They were being led through the annual showcase dwelling sponsored for the National Association of Home Builders convention by the association`s National Council of the Housing Industry and Builder and Home magazines.
Above the tour group was a 28-foot-high cone-shaped ceiling radially beamed with decorative 2-by-4s that somehow conveyed the feel of a jungle canopy. Just behind, where the vertical line was even longer above a space labeled an aviary, were cutout arches that looked like someone had gone wild with a giant jigsaw.
The group was spread out on a series of ascending landings winding around a soaring fireplace to a windowed nook with built-in bench seats described by one impressed observer as an opium den.
The central space was the gallery-cum-great room of the home and well could be accused of not being a room at all.
In fact, the architect, Charles Moore, of Austin, Tex., a leading figure in the postmodernist movement in architecture, called it ”a path in the forest where you can`t see what`s coming.”
And the builder, John Wieland, the leading independent producer of houses in the Atlanta area, used the term ”processional.”
Another leading architect, Californian Barry Berkus, admiringly cited it as an example of ”deconstructionism,” which in another context has been used to describe buildings intentionally designed to look as if they were falling down.
The space dominates the house, which is intended to present the latest in design ideas and construction and home products to participants in the convention, which ended in Atlanta earlier this week.
The sponsors have been building homes to show at the convention for six years, and the 1989 house, a 5,400-square-foot mansion with a price tag of $695,000, is by far the largest and most expensive.
It also hits a high in flamboyance. Hiding ready to pounce behind its traditional, Southern, ante bellum type exterior is a Disneyland castle, avant-garde museum and stage set all in one.
The house is in fact a walk-in encyclopedia of hot design trends, and the person who ultimately buys it will be someone for whom home is an aggressive artistic statement more than a refuge.
”This may not be the home you`re going to sell in your market place,”
Builder magazine editor Mitchell Rouda told a group of builders with some understatement. Nor is it necessarily ”a representation of where housing is going,” he added.
Next year, he said, the New American Home is planned for only 2,300 square feet, ”a much more modest home for a much more typical builder.”
But the 1989 version goes flatout for the luxury market.
”This year`s house is for the achievement family,” said Rouda. ”It`s the final rung on the move-up ladder.”
As baby boomers grow older and richer, the luxury market is becoming increasingly popular with builders. The typical luxury home buyer has a median income of $120,000, an average age of 42.5 years and anticipates spending more than $300,000 for a home, according to a Builder magazine survey that served as a basis for planning the house.
Even with the emphasis on luxury, the house ended up being far more lavish than originally intended, growing from 3,400 to 5,400 square feet as it moved out of the initial planning stage.
”We were making something to show off, so we put a lot of things in it, and all the things needed more space,” said Moore, adding that it was
”tempting to look back and see what we would have done if we had started out with that amount of space.”
Home magazine editor Channing Dawson attributed the house`s space splurge to pressures exerted by manufacturers who donate most of the materials.
”The politics is amazing,” he said.
Another factor may have been Moore`s design procedure, which he described cryptically to one convention session as ”groping towards spatial phenomena.”
Rouda emphasized that although the house made up a coherent whole, the point for builders is in the details that they can adapt to their own markets. ”We pumped lessons into every corner of the house,” he said.
Dawson said it was appropriate for such a house to present ”borrowable ideas … couched in something dreamlike, beyond reach.”
Hot design ideas in the house that could be transfered to less elaborate structures include:
– Mixing the traditional and the adventurous. With its sturdy columns in a portico in front of the house and around one side, the house fits neatly into its posh, architectually conservative Roswell, Ga., neighborhood.
”It has a sense of ordinariness, with the big, Tara-like porch,” said Moore. Inside, however, ”It has everything that anyone might think of.”
– Assemblage, giving a house a rambling look that suggests it was built up over time. To the right of the porch is a wing that differs in scale from the dominating porch, looking almost like a later addition.
– Dramatization of space through volume, special ceiling treatments, half-walls and cutouts. The interior designer, Lou Ann Bauer, of San Francisco, described the cutout arches above the great hall as ”upside-down flying buttresses.
– Using familiar windows in unfamiliar ways. The house, which has 127 windows that cost a total of $70,000, uses traditional-looking, divided light glass grouped in a variety of patterns.
”Windows should be a real architectural element in a house, not just a hole in the wall,” said Builder publisher Frank Anton at a design trends seminar at the convention.
– Drawing people through a central core in the house through a manipulation of space and light, as is done in the winding great room/gallery. ”The whole sense of something around the corner and out of sight, and of vertical uplift, can go into a house of any size,” Moore said.
– Breaking down space. The main space, with its landings and niches, is composed of a series of little spaces that could be used for both a huge party and a small family group. The fireplace in the middle of the room also splits up the space.
”Public rooms can work together or apart,” Rouda said. ”You can provide intimate corners.”
– Providing special space. The house is designed with little rooms and spaces as places to hide.
”There are 4 or 5 different areas where you can go if you want to escape from life and stress,” Bauer said.
– Creating private living suites. The New American Home`s master suite is below the main living area, with a walkout deck allowed by the hillside site. The suite`s bath area, fully as large as some comfortable apartments, meanders like the great hall from a sunken whirlpool tub to private his and hers toilets to an exercise room.
Putting the master suite downstairs not only emphasizes privacy but also allows for greater elaboration of space on both first and second floors, Rouda noted.
Two children`s bedrooms are on the second floor, with a glass-block-walled, walk-through shower between them. Another distinct apartment, with its own bath and staircase to the kitchen, is above the garage.
– Outdoor rooms. The master bath has a private garden courtyard to help bring in natural light, while the three-level deck area provides individuated outdoor spaces for eating, using a hot tub and sunning and relaxing outside the master bedroom.
The creation of outdoor areas adds to the interpenetration of interior and exterior space, which is a prominent theme in contemporary residential architecture.
”The challenges are very similar for little, middle-sized and big houses,” Moore contended, defending the house as a stimulus for building ideas even for modestly priced houses.
”You want to create a place that excites people, makes them feel good and uplifts them when they`re in the house.”
