WITH ITS VERTICAL proportions, board and batten siding, and gable brackets, this 3,575-square-foot “folk Victorian” concept home gives a polite wink to tradition on the outside, but quickly dispenses with it on the inside for the sake of saner, more harmonious, big family living.
The first rote feature to be reassigned by Looney Ricks Kiss was the typical grand foyer staircase. Here, the stairs are more functionally located in the middle of the plan, thus freeing up the front of the house for a dramatic yet practical dining room, plus extra kitchen-side territory for a multipurpose “do all” zone that can play any number of roles, including home office, hobby room, butler's pantry, or expanded laundry room. Built-in shelving and stowaway workstations on wheels blend function with good looks throughout. All in all, it's a plan that's designed to be as dynamic as the family that inhabits it.
Even the garage is a flexible piece of the puzzle. “In this case, we put the garage at the narrow end of an odd-shaped lot and allowed the house to fan out toward the view areas,” says architect Carson Looney. “But the garage is slip-jointed, meaning it can slide back and forth or pivot in relation to the plan to fit lots with different dimensions. We always try to make the garage a flexible amenity that moves around, not part of the embedded DNA of the house.”
Category: Production/Semi-custom, more than 3,000 square feet; Entrant/Architect: Looney Ricks Kiss Architects, Memphis, Tenn.; Builder/Developer: The St. Joe Co., DeLand, Fla.; Land planner: Glatting Jackson, Orlando, Fla.; Interior designer: Brooks Interior Design, Maitland, Fla.; Landscape architect: Dix Lathrop & Associates, Longwood, Fla.; Project sponsor:Southern Living, Birmingham, Ala.
