custom home design

Carrboro Hillside House Wins a Jury Award in 2022 Matsumoto Prize Competition

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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 Matsumoto Prize 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.

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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.

Vote for the CARRBORO HILLSIDE HOUSE in this year’s Matsumoto Prize awards!

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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!

ON THE BOARDS: Blueplate PR Client Arielle Condoret Schechter, AIA, Designs Modern, Net-Zero-Ready Cliff-Hanger in Western NC

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RENDERING OF FUTURE MILLER-McWEENEY HOUSE, NORTHSIDE

Calling the site for this project “one of the tightest little corners I’ve ever had to make something fit,” Chapel Hill architect Arielle Condoret Schechter, AIA, has designed a modern, sustainable home on a mountainside in Swannanoa, NC, a tiny township between Asheville and Black Mountain, NC.

Designed for P.J. Miller, a musician, and artist Katie McWeeney, the two-story, modern, thoroughly “green” house will hug the flat part of the couple’s cliff-side property and include three bedrooms, two baths, an open kitchen/dining/living core, two studios/workspaces, two carports, and abundant decking for outdoor living and connectivity between the indoors and outdoors.

Chief among Schechter’s inspirations for this design was the couple’s lament over never having enough kitchen, workspace, or studio space in previous homes. “We’re trying to remedy that in this house,” she said, accepting the challenge despite the restrictive size of the property’s buildable area.

RENDERING OF MILLER-McWEENEY HOUSE, SOUTHWEST ELEVATION

Actually, the site’s verticality helped her solve the studio/workspace problem. She’s tucked two studios beneath the living spaces, along with carports/loading zones on each end. The loading zones will create sightlines and open-air spaces within the entire volume, she pointed out, “and create the sort of positive-negative composition I like.”

Along with art and music, Miller and McSweeney enjoy cooking, baking, and hosting cooking classes. To enhance their passion, the Schechter-designed kitchen will provide a profusion of natural lighting along with an open, professionally planned interior.

Will the Miller-McWeeney home contribute to Schechter’s ever-expanding portfolio of net-zero residential designs?

“Yes, of course,” she said emphatically. “Our goal for all our houses is to be net-zero, net-positive or at the very least, net-zero-ready.” The latter means that the completed house will be wired and plumbed for solar panels to be installed in the future. “That, plus rooftop water collection for gardening should make this a very sustainable house for this great couple to enjoy.”

For more information on the architect and her work, visit acsarchitect.com.

Blueplate PR Client’s Project Featured in Metal Architecture magazine.

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pod architecture + design’s “Hillside House” gets national press.

Abundant glazing provides views of the wooded site from every room. (Photo by Allen Weiss)

by Christopher Brinkerhoff, Associate Editor

Zig zagging down a hillside in Carrboro, N.C., a black-clad house blends into a wooded site. The home is the vision of partners and design duo Douglas Pierson and Youn Choi, pod architecture + design PLLC, Chapel Hill, N.C.

The house comprises three forms that are connected. At their simplest, they are rectangles that connect to form a Z pattern, descending the slope of the hill toward a creek.

Corrugated metal panels give texture to the lengthy façades that are punctured by horizontal windows, which emphasize their length. To keep the lines clean, the architects specified limited trim.

Two Appearances

The home blends in with other houses in the neighborhood in terms of size and scale, but because of the slope, the two lower forms disappear from the street view. The buildable area on the hillside site was limited to a triangular, northeast corner of the site. Instead of facing the streetside to the east, the house faces the creek bed to the southwest. READ MORE

HOME BUILDER DIGEST: “The 18 Best Residential Architects in North Carolina”

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North Carolina is one of the most popular states to live in the country. The “Triangle” region of the state, which includes Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill, provides visitors and residents with a myriad of reasons to enjoy the state…

For those considering relocating to the region and those seeking to upgrade their North Carolina homes, the best residential architects are necessary. 

The [HBD list] showcases the best residential architects in North Carolina. These firms were selected based on their experiences in residential designs, awards won, years in the industry, and media coverage, and they are the best in the industry. (Click here to see the entire list.)…

…Arielle Condoret Schechter, AIA, Architect

A fine example of the firm’s accomplished projects is Wolf-Huang Residence on Lake Orange, NC. Photo by Tzu Chen

What separates multi-award-winning firm Arielle Condoret Schechter, Architect, from the other architects is a clear understanding of how each project is about more than designing an exceptional space. Each project has the capacity to enhance people’s lives and lifestyles, and this small firm is dedicated to doing exactly that. READ MORE

CHAPEL HILL MAGAZINE: “Lake Living — Two world travelers set down sustainable roots on Lake Orange”

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Another exemplary modern, minimalist, sustainable, custom-designed home by Blueplate PR client Arielle Condoret Schechter, AIA, is featured in the Jan/Feb. 2022 edition of Chapel Hill Magazine (page 57).

Writer: Morgan Cartier Weston. Photographer: John Michael Simpson

Homeowners Tom Wolf and Yiqing Huang and the lakeside elevation of their new home on Lake Orange.
“We needed someone to maximize every square inch of buildable space,” Tom said. So they turned to Chapel Hill architect Arielle Condoret Schechter, AIA, “to execute their vision…”

CLICK HERE to read the entire article

CLICK HERE for more information on the architect

Chapel Hill Magazine features another modern, sustainable, custom home by Blueplate PR client Arielle Condoret Schechter.

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By Morgan Cartier Wester | Photography by John Michael Simpson

To view the entire article in the January/February 2022 edition of Chapel Hill Magazine, click below and go to page 57.
January/February 2022

Inhabitat.com: “Carrboro Hillside House looks like a giant black snake”

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Designed by Blueplate PR client pod architecture + design

The driveway concludes at the main entrance underneath Hillside House.

by KC Morgan for Inhabitat.com

The location is tucked into a protected forested area covered in trees with a creek nearby. It’s an odd-shaped lot with a hillside and boulders, surrounded by nature. It was a huge challenge for architect Doug Pierson and designer Youn Choi, but the end result is absolutely stunning. READ MORE

Save the Date: “Hillside House” will be open for public touring Saturday, November 13

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The rear view shows “Hillside House” climbing up the natural hill on site.

On Saturday, November 13, NCModernist.org will present a public “Trickle Tour” of Hillside House at 130 Old Pittsboro Road, Carrboro. Specific time slots and ticket information will be announced later.

NCModernist (aka NC Modernist Houses) hosts several tours of modern house each year. Executive director George Smart created the “Trickle Tour” format in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The format allows the public to visit new or newly remodeled modernist houses at a “trickle” of the normal rate for the nonprofit organization’s home tours. Timed admission assures that very few people are inside a house during each time slot.

Doug Pierson, AIA, and Youn Choi, founding partners and principal designers at pod architecture + design in Chapel Hill, created Hillside House for their own family of four on a wooded lot within walking distance of downtown Carrboro.

In April 2020, the house caught the attention of the Wall Street Journal. A few months later, Chapel Hill Magazine featured it in an article entitled “Labor of Love.” It has also been published in Builder Magazine, Architizer, and in Dwell and Architect magazines’ galleries of residential projects.

This will be the first public tour of the angular house on Old Pittsboro Road that’s wrapped in corrugated black metal and appears to be twisting and turning its way up a steep hillside.

To see more exterior and interior photos, go to the “Hillside House”  page on Pierson’s and Choi’s website: podand.com/work#/carrboro-house.

Pictured Above: Doug and Sora on the first “living” level. Above them: Oscar at the cantilevered desk in the middle “work” level. Above right: Youn on the bedroom, or “sleep” level. (Photo by Cornel Watson for Chapel Hill Magazine.

Blueplate PR client’s Modern, Net Zero residential project featured on AMAZING ARCHITECTURE.com

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The Baboolal House by Arielle Condoret Schechter, AIA

Front elevation, screened side porch (Photo by Tzu Chen)

by Naser Nader Ibrahim

The Baboolal residence is a net zero house for a multicultural family of four. The husband is Indian originally from South Africa and the wife is American. They are both in high stress professions: he is a pediatric anesthesiologist and she is a pediatric nurse. They have two small children and pets.

The impetus for building this house was their previous frustration with living in a cookie cutter developer house with a lot of wasted space and illogical planning.

They decided to build a custom house that would give them openness for family time, while also creating privacy and quiet areas for the parents to rest between shifts and for the kids to have their own spaces. Also, an immediate connection between indoor and outdoor space was part of the brief. READ MORE…