A local Houston art collector hired us to create a low maintenance, sophisticated, contemporary landscape design. She wanted her property to compliment her eclectic taste in architecture, outdoor sculpture, and modern art. Her house was built with a minimalist approach to decoration, emphasizing right angles and windows instead of architectural keynotes. The west wing of the house was only one story, while the east wing was two-story. The windows in both wings were larger than usual, so that visitors could see her art collection from the home’s exterior. Near one of the large rear windows, there was an abstract metal sculpture designed in the form of a spiral. When she initially contacted us, the surrounding property had only a few trees and indigenous grass as vegetation. This was actually a good beginning point with us, because it allowed us to develop a contemporary landscape design that featured a very linear, crisp look supportive of the home and its contents. We began by planting a garden around the large contemporary sculpture near the window. Landscape designers planted horsetail reed under windows, along the sides of the home, and around the corners. This vegetation is very resilient and hardy, and requires little trimming, weeding, or mulching. This helped unite the diverse elements of sculpture, contemporary architecture, and landscape design into a more fluid harmony that preserved the proportions of each unique element, but eliminated any tendency for the elements to clash with one another. We then added two stonework designs to the landscape surrounding the contemporary art collection and home. The first was a linear walkway we build from concrete pads purchased through a retail vendor as a cost-saving benefit to our client. We created this walkway to follow the perimeter of the home so that visitors could walk around the entire property and admire the outdoor sculptures and the collections of modern art visible through the windows. This was especially enjoyable at night, when the entire home was brightly lit from within. To add a touch of tranquility and quite repose to the stark right angles of the home and surrounding contemporary landscape, we designed a special seating area toward the northwest corner of the property. We wanted to create a sense of contemplation in this area, so we departed from the linear and angular designs of the surrounding landscape and established a theme of circular geometry. We laid down gravel as ground cover, then placed large, circular pads arranged like giant stepping stones that led up to a stone patio filled with chairs. The shape of the granite pads and the contours of the graveled area further complimented the spirals and turns in the outdoor metal sculpture, and balanced the entire contemporary landscape design with proportional geometric forms of lines, angles, and curves. This particular contemporary landscape design also has a sense of movement attached to it. All stonework leads to a destination of some sort. The linear pathway provides a guided tour around the home, garden, and modern art collection. The granite pathway stones create movement toward separate space where the entire experience of art, vegetation, and architecture can be viewed and experienced as a unity. Contemporary landscaping designs like create form out of feeling by using basic geometric forms and variations of forms. Sometimes very stark forms are used to create a sense of absolutism or contrast. At other times, forms are blended, or even distorted to suggest a sense of complex emotion, or a sense of multi-dimensional reality. The exact nature of the design is always highly subjective, and developed on a case-by-case basis with the client.

McDunn Construction, Inc., Berkeley, California, 2022 Regional CotY Award Winner, Entire House $500,001 to $750,000
サンフランシスコにある高級な小さなモダンスタイルのおしゃれな家の外観 (漆喰サイディング) の写真

シカゴにある高級な小さなトラディショナルスタイルのおしゃれな家の外観 (漆喰サイディング) の写真

Steve Smith Photography
他の地域にある小さなトラディショナルスタイルのおしゃれな家の外観 (漆喰サイディング) の写真

バーミングハムにある小さなトランジショナルスタイルのおしゃれな家の外観 (漆喰サイディング) の写真

Exterior of French Country Cottage in Annapolis, MD. Stucco exterior with metal roof at entrance. Mahogany front door with leaded and beveled glass. Photo by Rex Reed

One emerges from the forest and first comes upon the artist's studio with north facing clerestry windows and large french doors opening out onto the work terrace. photo: Adams Mohler Ghillino

Cindy Apple
シアトルにあるお手頃価格の小さなインダストリアルスタイルのおしゃれな家の外観 (メタルサイディング) の写真

Photo: Durston Saylor
ニューヨークにある高級な小さなコンテンポラリースタイルのおしゃれな家の外観 (メタルサイディング) の写真

Mitchel Shenker Photography. Street view showing restored 1920's restored storybook house.
サンフランシスコにある高級な小さなトラディショナルスタイルのおしゃれな家の外観 (漆喰サイディング) の写真

FineCraft Contractors, Inc. Harrison Design
ワシントンD.C.にあるお手頃価格の小さなモダンスタイルのおしゃれな家の外観 (漆喰サイディング) の写真

In the quite streets of southern Studio city a new, cozy and sub bathed bungalow was designed and built by us. The white stucco with the blue entrance doors (blue will be a color that resonated throughout the project) work well with the modern sconce lights. Inside you will find larger than normal kitchen for an ADU due to the smart L-shape design with extra compact appliances. The roof is vaulted hip roof (4 different slopes rising to the center) with a nice decorative white beam cutting through the space. The bathroom boasts a large shower and a compact vanity unit. Everything that a guest or a renter will need in a simple yet well designed and decorated garage conversion.

Guest House
アトランタにある高級な小さなカントリー風のおしゃれな家の外観 (メタルサイディング、縦張り) の写真

ミネアポリスにある低価格の小さなコンテンポラリースタイルのおしゃれな家の外観 (メタルサイディング) の写真

The steel and glass addition was inserted into a narrow courtyard between the original ranch house and carport. The addition integrates with the original home while also producing dramatic new elements, such as the large translucent glass window in the front which allows light while maintaining privacy from the street. The front of the original house, which had several different cladding materials, was re-clad in stucco. Photo copyright Nathan Eikelberg

Jeff Amberg Photography
アトランタにある高級な小さなコンテンポラリースタイルのおしゃれな家の外観 (漆喰サイディング) の写真

Porter Fuqua
ダラスにあるラグジュアリーな小さな地中海スタイルのおしゃれな家の外観 (漆喰サイディング) の写真

Coup D'Etat
トロントにあるお手頃価格の小さなコンテンポラリースタイルのおしゃれな家の外観 (メタルサイディング) の写真

Our pioneer project, Casita de Tierra in San Juan del Sur, Nicaragua, showcases the natural building techniques of a rubble trench foundation, earthbag construction, natural plasters, earthen floors, and a composting toilet. Our earthbag wall system consists of locally available, cost-efficient, polypropylene bags that are filled with a formula of clay and aggregate unearthed from our building site. The bags are stacked like bricks in running bonds, which are strengthened by courses of barbed wire laid between each row, and tamped into place. The walls are then plastered with a mix composed of clay, sand, soil and straw, and are followed by gypsum and lime renders to create attractive walls. The casita exhibits a load-bearing wall system demonstrating that thick earthen walls, with no rebar or cement, can support a roofing structure. We, also, installed earthen floors, created an indoor dry-composting toilet system, utilized local woods for the furniture, routed all grey water to the outdoor garden, and maximized air flow by including cross-ventilating screened windows below the natural palm frond and cane roof. Casita de Tierra exemplifies an economically efficient, structurally sound, aesthetically pleasing, environmentally kind, and socially responsible home.