“This low-energy farmhouse is a net zero architectural re-set for a Californian client, an East Coast relocation for a more engaged and low-key lifestyle”
Photos by Tzu Chen Photography.
By Jonathan Bell
North Carolina, where this low-energy farmhouse is located, is a long way from California; but that was the scope of the move made by Arielle Schechter’s client when they decided on a wholesale change in outlook and lifestyle. The chosen site for [this] Net Zero Farmhouse was ideal for agricultural use, bordering a small creek. The surrounding land is a mix of native grass meadow and woodland, with unspoilt views in every direction. READ MORE
Designers/owners fuse authentic historic charm with modern interior architecture to create a multi-family residence befitting its cool community.
Rendering of the restored bungalow by pod architecture + design: History is honored on the exterior……but inside, the vibe is thoroughly Modern with open floorplans, cathedral ceilings, high-efficiency appliances, and the warmth of natural wood.
PRESS RELEASE — At 818 Haywood Road in West Asheville, architect Doug Pierson, AIA, LEED AP, BD+C, and experiential designer Youn Choi have completely gutted the two-level, 1930s bungalow there. Now the husband-and-wife team behind the award-winning studio pod architecture + design (pod a+d) in Chapel Hill, is reorganizing, rebuilding, and repurposing the house to accommodate three thoroughly Modern apartments. They call it “Phase 1” of the old bungalow’s rebirth as the stylish Haywood Apartments.
“Phase 1 is about restoring a dilapidated 1930s house on Haywood Road to its original and historic exterior beauty,” Choi pointed out, “and creating modern interiors befitting this hip, up-and-coming neighborhood environment.”
Although the house is on-grade at the front, it becomes two stories at the rear where the slope of the property drops sharply, thus allowing space for three units inside. The largest will have 1275 square feet, the other two one-bedroom units approximately 760 square feet each.
The couple expects construction to be complete in May with tenants moving in by June. And they’re determined to keep to that schedule because Pierson and Choi are not only the architect and interior designers for this project. They’re also the owners, developers, and landscape architects.
From Venice Beach to the Great Smokies
Doug Pierson, Youn Choi
Before Pierson and Choi moved their family of four to Chapel Hill, their personal and professional home base was Los Angeles, California. In L.A., Pierson spent several years working with world-renowned modernist architect Frank Gehry, FAIA, then helped found the award-winning firm “(fer) studios” in Irvine.
Meanwhile, Youn Choi was gaining international recognition as a lead designer for Walt Disney Imagineering and as Design Director for Landmarks, Cityscapes, and Signage & Wayfinding at Selbert Perkins Design in L.A, where she led the environmental design team on such high-profile projects as the Dallas Cowboys Stadium and LAX Airport.
In Venice Beach, the couple designed an innovative and highly published three-level house for their family on a seemingly impossible 700-square-foot lot. After relocating to North Carolina, they kept it as a rental property for several years.
In 2018, the couple purchased another challenging lot in an old, established neighborhood in Carrboro, NC. There, they designed a new house for themselves with a unique modern form inspired by the complexities of their land. “Carrboro Hillside House,” as they call it, also inspired them to let go of their West Coast attachments and focus on living in their new home state. (The firm has projects, however, from coast to coast.) They sold their Venice Beach house and other property in California last year and invested instead in the NC mountains.
“The Most Expressive Neighborhood”
Why Asheville? “Because Asheville is the hub of Western North Carolina,” Pierson explained, “with vibrant art and cultural identities. And West Asheville is the most expressive and intriguing neighborhood in the city, filled with novel restaurants, retro-cool music venues, vintage clothing shops, and great murals.”
They chose the property and bungalow at 818 Haywood Road because “the most sustainable act we, as designers, can do is to keep an existing building and make it better, more energy efficient, more livable, and more amenable to local needs,” he said. “It was always our intention to refurbish and repurpose the house to fit the needs of the community better — where there happens to be a drastic shortage of one-bedroom apartments – and to make that spot along Haywood Road vibrant again.”
Rendering of the bedroom in a lower-level apartment featuring space-saving “barn doors.”
On the exterior, they’re repairing and maintaining the low-pitched gabled roof and the German lap wood siding “all of which is typical of the old bungalows on Haywood Road,” Choi noted. Inside, they’re juxtaposing the original exposed brick with Modern plywood-paneled “cathedral” ceilings and exposed structural steel elements.
C&L Home Improvement LLC of Knightdale, NC, and Suttles Construction Inc. of Henderson County, NC, are the builders for the transformation. Al Sartorelli of Al Sortorelli Real Estate in Asheville is the property manager.
Site Plan including Phase 2.
Urban Infill in Phase 2
Phase 2 of the partners’ West Asheville venture (date TBD) will be to develop and design a new 3500-square-foot, mixed-use “urban infill” building facing Haywood Road “as a contemporary compliment to the richly textured neighborhood,” Pierson said.
As owners and managers of the property, Pierson and Choi are working under the name “pod enterprises LLC.” Wearing that hat recently, they both smiled. “Right now,” Choi said, “we can’t wait to meet the future residents of the new Haywood Apartments.”
606 Transylvania Avenue, Raleigh, designed by NCSU professor and modernist master architect George Matsumoto. (Photo courtesy NCModernist.org)
PRESS RELEASE — The 1954 Midcentury Modern house at 606 Transylvania Avenue, Raleigh, designed by internationally renowned architect George Matsumoto for Bill and Betty Weber and once threatened with demolition, will begin its seven-mile journey to a new location on Saturday, January 20, at 6 a.m.
The destination: an empty lot on Delmont Street immediately next door to the Modern home of the Raleigh couple saving this architectural gem from demolition — Melinda and Andrew Knowles.
With a police escort yet several points along the route where power lines must be moved, the journey should take about three hours. The polemics surrounding the house have been churning for four months.
In September 2023, the Raleigh News & Observer reported that the people who purchased the property at 606 Transylvania Avenue for $1.8 million did so strictly for the land. They intended to raze the Matsumoto house and replace it with a much larger house. And the City approved the application for a demolition permit.
When the Knowles learned that the house was in imminent danger, they decided to approach the new property owner with a proposal: Instead of devoting the time and expense necessary to raze the house, why not let them move it onto the vacant lot beside their own home on Delmont Street? The Transylvania Avenue owners ultimately agreed.
According to George Smart, Executive Director of NCModernist and the Knowles’ consultant, the owners deeded the house to the Knowles with minimal fees. Then the Raleigh City Council approved a $250,000 loan for the Knowles to cover the expense of relocating the house. (The money comes from the Preservation Revolving Loan Fund the City established for this purpose.)
Exceptional from Inception
When the late Henry Kamphoefner became founding dean of North Carolina State University’s School (now College) of Design in Raleigh in 1948, he immediately began populating his faculty roster with architectural luminaries who would help him bring modernist design to the South. He encouraged them to build as well as teach — specifically, to design and build modernist houses throughout the area.
One of the stars of his elite faculty was the Japanese/American Modernist master George Matsumoto (1922-2016), who would receive over 30 design awards for residential projects during his 1948-1961 tenure at NC State. In 1956, the School of Design named the north wing addition to Brooks Hall, the “Matsumoto Wing.”
Matsumoto designed 606 Transylvania in 1954 both for and with his colleague, architect/homeowner Bill Weber. Shortly after completion, Architectural Record, the preeminent architecture design journal, gave the Raleigh house a five-page spread.
NCModernist’s prestigious design awards program for Modernist houses in North Carolina — the Matsumoto Prize — honors the man and the role he played in shaping Modernist architecture in the state.
For more information on George Matsumoto and his work, click here and here.
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Melinda and Andrew Knowles, and George Smart, will be available on moving day, January 20, for interviews.
On Wednesday, November 15, from 5 – 7 p.m., pod architecture + design (pod a+d) partners Doug Pierson, AIA, and Youn Choi, along with owner/master distiller Tina Williford, will co-host a “Thirst4Architecture” social event in Williford’s Liberty & Plenty Distillery & Cocktail Bar at 609 B Foster Street in downtown Durham.
Thirst4Architecture (T4A) “happy hours” are sponsored by NCModernist, the non-profit organization dedicated to preserving and promoting modernist architecture. Hosted by architecture firms and other businesses in the industry, these networking events are free and open to all modernist design enthusiasts in the Triangle, from homeowners, artists and architects to contractors, realtors, interior designers, et al.
Large, roll-up doors invite breezes inside from the Liberty & Plenty porch.
Williford founded Liberty & Plenty in March 2020 as a 100 percent woman-owned craft distillery. During the November 15th event, guests will be able to sample a selection of her unique, small-batch spirits, including vodkas, gins, rums, and whiskies. She will also provide h’ordeuvres and non-alcoholic beverages.
Along with introducing the distillery to T4A participants, the event will spotlight the architectural transformation of a 3400-square-foot, industrial brick warehouse built in 1930 into a fully operational craft spirits distillery fronted by a modern, casually chic Cocktail Bar. To create this conversion, Williford collaborated with pod architecture + design, the Chapel Hill-based firm with award-winning expertise in modern craft distillery and brewery design and one of Blueplate PR‘s exclusive clients.
Doug Pierson, Youn Choi, and Tina Williford will be on hand, happy to discuss the process of bringing Liberty & Plenty to life in downtown Durham.
THE REDDY-YU RESIDENCE NEARING COMPLETION. A LARGE SCREENED PORCH EXTENDS THE LIVING SPACE INTO THE OUTDOORS.
When transnational couple Satish Reddy (India) and Ping Yu (China) decided to relocate from California and Texas to Chapel Hill, NC, they dreamed of building their own custom-designed, net zero house to reduce their new home’s carbon footprint and environmental impact. To make this dream come true, they turned to Arielle Condoret Schechter, AIA, the award-winning, Chapel Hill-based architect whose residential design portfolio is defined by modern, net zero/net positive passive homes.
On Saturday, September 9, the recently completed Reddy-Yu Residence will be featured on the Fall 2023 Modapalooza Tour, the annual fall tour of modernist houses throughout the Triangle region organized by NCModernist, a North Carolina 501C3 nonprofit educational archive for the documentation, preservation, and promotion of Modernist houses from the mid-20th century to today.
THE REDDY-YU RESIDENCE, MAIN ENTRANCE, TWO-CAR GARAGE
Passive & Active Strategies: Like all of Schechter’s custom-designed net-zero houses, Reddy-Yu’s design is dependent upon various “passive” strategies, most notably a tight, leak-free building envelope, the barrier between indoors and outdoors encompassing the walls, windows, doors, and roof. Continuous high R-value insulation and triple-glazed, passive-house-suitable windows and exterior doors are vital elements of any net zero house, including this one.
The high-performance exterior walls are clad in gray fiber cement panels with wood accents providing warm visual and textural contrast.
A solar array on the butterfly roof and backup batteries in the garage supply the “active” technology needed to produce all the energy required to meet net zero status — to produce as much energy as the house uses.
Water conservation: Schechter also designed the house to collect rainwater for irrigating vegetable gardens the homeowners plan to install later this year.
Aromatic Kitchen Culture: “Satish and Ping are both gourmet cooks, so the kitchen is a room of great importance to them,” Schechter noted. “Their kitchen will produce multiple cuisines: Chinese, Indian, and more.”
Because the two often cook fragrant foods at very high temperatures, their architect needed to find a way to isolate the cooking aromas from the rest of the house. To that end, she made sure the kitchen could be completely closed off when necessary.
Passages: An abundance of windows and sliding glass doors provide a strong connectivity to the outdoors. On the northern elevation, a screened porch and deck structure, under the protection of a broad roof, extends the living space into the backyard.
Between the public spaces that Satish and Ping share with family and friends and the primary bedroom suite is a small “bridge” that provides a clear transition to their private “quiet zone.”
Arielle Schechter will be in the Reddy-Yu residence during the tour to speak with participants and answer any questions. For more information on the architect and her work, CLICK HERE
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According to George Smart, founder and CEO of NCModernist/USModernist, the 2023 Fall Modapalooza Tour is sold out. However, a waiting list is available by clicking HERE. For more information on the Tour, including photos of all seven houses included, CLICK HERE.
North Carolina’s highest honor for Modernist residential architecture.
First Prize in last year’s Matsumoto Prize Peoples Choice voting: The Hancock Residence in Winston-Salem by STITCH Design Shop, Winston-Salem.
June 19, 2023 (DURHAM, NC) — Public voting is now open at NCMHCOMPETITIONS.ORG to select the best modernist house among 19 submitted from across the state in the 2023 George Matsumoto Prize, the annual design awards program hosted by NCModernist and sponsored by Fitch Lumber / MARVIN.
Anyone, anywhere with an email address can vote (one vote per address) from now until July 5th at 5 p.m.
The Matsumoto Prize is this state’s highest honor exclusively for Modernist residential design. The houses entered must be in North Carolina, but the designers can be based anywhere. Public voting determines three “Peoples Choice” winners. A jury comprised of internationally recognized architects and related professionals also selects first, second, and third prize “Jury’s Choice” winners. And often they overlap.
NCModernist, a non-profit organization dedicated to preserving, promoting, and documenting modernist residential designs from the mid-20th century to today, created the Matsumoto Prize in 2012. The name honors George Matsumoto, one of the founding faculty members of North Carolina State University’s College of Design who created some of North Carolina’s finest Modernist houses.
The 2023 houses range in size from modest to large and in locations from tiny Sylva, a mountain village southwest of Asheville, to Greensboro. All the designers/architects are NC-based this year.
Voters may view multiple photos, plans, and drawings of the houses by clicking on the names of the designers highlighted in blue on ncmhcompetitions.org. Instructions for voting are also on that page.
The winners will be announced at the 2023 Matsumoto Prize Awards Ceremony to be held Wednesday, July 26, 6-8 pm, at Leland Little Auctions, 620 Cornerstone Court, Hillsborough, NC
Chapel Hill Design Firm and Louisville Distillery Receive Category’s Top Prize in 2022 Metal News Construction Awards
Rabbit Hole Distillery’s award-winning Tank Expansion Building at night. Designed by pod architecture + design of Chapel Hill, NC., the small structure serves as a lantern after dark for distillery staff and other pedestrians. (Photos by Youn Choi)
Metal Construction News magazine (MCN), a national trade publication for the metal industry, has announced that the new Tank Expansion Building on Rabbit Hole Distillery’s campus in downtown Louisville, KY, designed by Chapel Hill, NC’s pod architecture + design (pod a+d), has won the 2022 Project Excellence Award for “Metal Walls – New Construction” in MCN’s annual Building & Roofing Awards program. Under the headline “A Jewel in an Alley,” the project is featured in the print and digitalversions of Metal Construction News.
In 2018, pod a+d partners and principals Doug Pierson, AIA, LEED AP BD+C, and his wife, experiential designer Youn Choi, completed Rabbit Hole’s original structure: a modern, predominately metal, $15 million, 55,000-square-foot bourbon distillery. Subsequently, Rabbit Hole Distillery became that year’s Grand Award Winner among all the MCN Building & Roofing Awards.
This relatively tiny, 1100-square-foot building became necessary when Rabbit Hole Distillery needed three additional 12,000-gallon fermentation tanks to expand the production of its award-winning bourbon. To produce the structure, Rabbit Hole founder Kaveh Zamanian turned again to the pod a+d husband-and-wife team, aware of the couple’s ability to create meaningful modern architecture at any size.
The Result: Multiple Purposes
Despite the building’s diminutive size and practical function — to house three massive fermentation tanks — Pierson and Choi believed it could perform several purposes if designed accordingly. For example, its location on the center-city campus would turn the building into a welcoming kiosk-like structure at Rabbit Hole’s Market Street entrance.
By day, the distillery’s “rabbit jumping down a hole” logo is awhimsical addition to such a hardworking little building.
It could also contribute to the City of Louisville’s plans to revitalize two historic back streets: Nanny Goat Strut Alley, adjacent to the building, and Billy Goat Strut Alley, the sites for the city’s annual Bock Beer & Goat Race Festival.
To sustain Zamanian’s quest for architectural transparency throughout the distillery campus, the designers gave the new building huge windows so that passersby can watch the work going on inside.
The next step was to clad the exterior in a colored cement board and then wrap it in 1000 square feet of 1/4-inch-thick, “Champagne Metallic” metal sheets with one-inch holes. To keep the panels consistent, the duo devised “custom panel conditions.” Pierson explained the concept to MCN editor Marcy Marro:
“As we worked through the process, we were able to generalize it so we could have standard details all the way around. That allowed us to have factory edges for the panels, which was really important.” He noted that the long sides of the panels were never cut.
An eye-catching element of this utilitarian structure appears on the elevation facing Nanny Goat Strut Alley: an enormous version of Rabbit Hole’s whimsical logo, which first appeared above the distillery’s main entrance.
“Something Really Special…for the City of Louisville”
By day, the combination of tinted and perforated metal creates an eye-catching duo-toned effect that supports the building’s appearance as a gateway kiosk to the distillery campus. At night, Exterior Linear LED lights illuminate the exterior walls from behind so that the little building glows like a lantern to light the way for city pedestrians and Rabbit Hole staff.
“Wherever we have a perforated metal seam, we have a very thin concealed light that backlights the cavity, so the perforation holes create the glowing effect,” Pierson told MCN.
Choi added, “We wanted the building to brighten up the context and celebrate the history there.”
Pierson smiled. “Our goal was to create something really special and really interesting for the City of Louisville.”
In declaring the Tank Expansion Building as the best of its category, the MCN design jury seems to suggest “mission accomplished.”
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Published by Modern Trade Communications, Metal Construction News is the leading authority on the use of metal in architectural applications and building design. All of 2022’s award-winning projects are featured in MCN’s December digital and print editions.
Click here for information on pod architecture + design.
Click here for additional photos and specific information on the Tank Expansion Building.
Click here for photos and further details about the Rabbit Hole Distillery.
Rendering of the future Devonian, designed by pod architecture + design
Blueplate PR client pod architecture + design (pod a+d), an award-winning design firm in Chapel Hill, NC, together with visionary real estate developer Gill Holland of Louisville, Kentucky, recently revealed plans for “The Devonian,” a 17,000-square-foot, post-pandemic, community hotel at 1614-24 Lytle Street in Louisville’s historic Portland neighborhood designed to serve local residents as well as travelers.
Unlike standard hotels and motels whose amenities are strictly for paying guests, Holland’s hospitality venture aims to include the Portland and greater Louisville area with indoor/outdoor spaces for community and special events. Along with the 25 small guest rooms, the Devonian will offer a heated courtyard swimming pool, a rooftop deck where Portland-based non-profits can host fundraisers, and easy access to the Louisville Visual Arts gallery next door, the University of Louisville Hite Art Institute, and live music and more at “fifteenTWELVE,” a creative compound on Portland Avenue. Also, The Devonian will be a block from the heralded Table Café, one block from the Waterfront Phase IV (being built now), and less than two miles from Norton Healthcare Sports and Learning Center.
“It’s crazy that there is not one hotel west of Ninth Street in Louisville, an area that, on its own, would be the fourth largest city in the state of Kentucky,” Holland said. “We typically do not announce any projects or partnerships until we have found the financing, but we need to find partners both to get this built and to operate it. So, we wanted to get the word out now that the permitting has been approved.”
Rendering, The Devonian, looking east.
Like most motels and motor lodges along the nation’s highways, The Devonian’s rooms will have open-air access rather than interior hallways, and an open, accessible lobby. Rooms overlooking the pool will face inward to provide privacy for guests and adjacent neighbors.
Established in 1811, Portland is an urban neighborhood northwest of downtown Louisville, located on the Falls of the Ohio River. Fossils discovered at the Falls date back 400 million years to the geological Devonian Period, an interval of the Paleozoic Era. Holland named his new-concept hotel “The Devonian” to honor that source of neighborhood pride.
Following Holland’s lead, pod a+d partners Douglas Pierson, AIA, and designer Youn Choi used abstractions of the fossil forms found in the area to establish tectonic geometries in the building itself: The exposed structure will feature geometric shapes and patterns visible in the corals discovered in the Ohio River’s limestone bed.
The exposed structure will feature geometric shapes and patterns visible in the corals discovered in the Ohio River’s limestone bed.
The Devonian’s specific context is also reflected in the architecture. Located at the threshold between Portland’s iconic warehouse/commercial district to the east and residential neighborhoods to the west, the building’s rugged modernist form, devoid of ornamentation, suggests the raw feel of an industrial warehouse while the glass-enclosed lobby and open roof deck recall porches and breezeways among Portland’s historic homes.
“The Devonian is a neighborhood compass that navigates regional pulls,” said Choi. “To the east, it focuses its view on the historic commercial streets and buildings. To the West, it is a landmark that acknowledges the transition from commercial to residential. To the North, it recognizes its pre-historic era. And to the South, it is an axis to placemaking spaces that are emerging in West Louisville neighborhoods.”
Doug Pierson and Gill Holland have worked together on other projects over the years, most notably The Green Building, a nationally acclaimed, thoroughly sustainable mixed-use commercial project in downtown Louisville that brought community pride back to a forgotten section of that city. The designers and developer hope The Devonian will do the same for the Portland community.
When financing is secured, Holland says construction should begin next spring.
For more information on pod architecture + design, visit www.podand.com.
Hillside House, designed by pod architecture + design, in neighborhood context.
(CARRBORO, NC) – “Hillside House,” the modern, metal-clad home designed by architect Doug Pierson, AIA, and designer Youn Choi of pod architecture + design for their own family of four, received a prestigious Jury Award during the 2022 George Matsumoto Prize competition recognizing excellence in modernist residential design.
Leland Little Auctions in Hillsborough hosted this year’s awards ceremony on Thursday, July 28.
NC Modernist, a nationally acclaimed non-profit organization and website based and maintained in Durham, created the Matsumoto Prize in 2012 to honor modernist architect George Matsumoto, FAIA, one of the founding faculty members of North Carolina State University’s College of Design. The MatsumotoPrize is North Carolina’s highest honor exclusively for modernist residential architecture throughout the state.
Located on a wooded lot in an established neighborhood near downtown Carrboro, Hillside House is a long, slender, three-level home that directly responds to the natural terrain in form and plan. Its black metal exterior and a cantilevered corner as it zigzags up a steep hill decrease its impact on the landscape and natural hydrology.
Doug Pierson, Youn Choi
According to NC Modernist’s founder and director George Smart, the jurors appreciated the symbiosis between the architecture and the land. Yet they were most impressed by Pierson’s and Choi’s design decisions that, as parents, they knew would enhance daily life for their young-adult child with autism. As they explained in their awards submission:
“An ideal floor plan developed within the long, narrow form…[that] offers visible connectivity across the length and height of the house to facilitate communication. It also provides retreat spaces for privacy.”
Info, Video, Images & Plans
· Click here to view the video pod a+d created for the competition, narrated by Doug Pierson.
· Click here for more information on pod architecture + design, and here for information, photos, drawings, and plans for Hillside House.
· Click here to view all the modernist houses submitted for the Matsumoto Prize this year.
Go to ncmhcompetitions.org, scroll down a bit, and VOTE for this unique, modern, sustainable, custom-designed home in Carrboro, NC, where the land dictated the form and the family’s specific needs informed the plan. Thanks so much!
Client News and Media Recognition 