Spokane Home Builders Association: 2007 BALA Home of the Year with Floorplan

Architects:
Looney Ricks Kiss Architects

Builder:
Haven Custom Homes

The 2007 Best in American Living Awards (BALA) Home of the Year , Tucker Bayou, is a modular cottage built as an empty-nester vacation home in WaterSound along the Florida panhandle.

Nestled among southern pine and fronting a golf course, the home is also the 2007 Southern Living magazine “Idea House.” Though designed and built as a cottage, the 3,544-square-foot house also works just as easily as a family home — with clear differentiation of public and private spaces.

A Home of Subtle Space Distinctions

Homes often distinguish public spaces from private spaces by having the private spaces on the second floor and reserving the public spaces for the first floor.

Tucker Bayou draws more subtly on these distinctions, beginning with its two entrances to the home. While the front elevation faces the golf course, it is accessible only by a private pathway that connects to the other homes in the area. The home's more public entrance, the one that most visitors use, is at the rear of the home where there is a car park area and an enclosed garden.

That entry through the garden area also helps define public and private spaces. From the garden, an entry hallway brings visitors through a gallery. There is also a private entry into the kitchen from a covered walkway and the rear porch.

Off the kitchen are a family work area that serves as a staging area for groceries and an adjacent utility area. Public spaces on the first floor include the kitchen, dining area and living room. Private spaces include the owner's suite and an exercise or study area. The master bedroom has a private entrance.

The children's bunkroom on the second floor offers a retreat for the children, giving the adults downstairs quiet time of their own. Two additional bedrooms and a media room upstairs also provide a guest getaway — when kids aren't occupying the bunks.

The public versus private aspects fit with the way empty nesters use this house, according to architect J. Carson Looney, of Looney Ricks Kiss Architects of Memphis.

“It's a lot of what we see in the panhandle region,” he said. “Homes may blow you away by what's inside. But there is an overwhelming desire to be understated from the street. Big developments (in the area) don't sustain value or achieve the price point per foot.”

Blending in With Its Environment

The cottage fits its environment with ease, both standing out from the forest setting and blending in comfortably. The roof's shape, with its strong cross gable, accommodates a lot of space, said the architect, but the shape also enables the house to fit into its elegant location.

A Big Home or a Cottage?

Nowhere is that understated nature of Tucker Bayou more obvious than the seeming contradiction of it being a 3,544 square-foot home and a cottage.

The home reads as an intimate space with human-scale rooms that allow people to feel relaxed and welcome in the environment. The architects achieved this by making the roof line seem smaller while delivering more space within the home.

The interior design elements also play to the feeling of the cottage. In particular, the palette reflects a quiet life and the bead-board walls, coffered ceilings and pine floor present a pastiche of cottage life that fits the empty nester vacation lifestyle.

The BALA awards, the nation's foremost residential design competition, are co-sponsored by Professional Builder magazine and NAHB.