Outliers in architecturally distinct areas can linger on the market, but fetch a premium over comparable homes.

By Katy McLaughlin  |  Photos by Jeremy M. Lange for the WSJ

April 16, 2020 2:25 pm ET

…Youn Choi and her husband Doug Pierson are just finishing construction of a home in Carrboro, N.C., that is so “unique” and “quirky” that neighbors stand and stare at it from the road, said Mr. Pierson, 55.

One curious passerby called out “what is that?” When Mr. Pierson answered “it’s a house,” he responded, “really?” In general, neighbors have been encouraging, flashing “thumbs-up” signs or telling the couple they like it.

Mr. Pierson and his wife, who co-own an architecture and design firm in Chapel Hill, N.C., moved from Los Angeles, where they worked for contemporary design firms. Their suburban community features some historic mill houses and lots of newer, traditional homes. But the house the couple designed, with its snakelike form, cantilevered angles and black, corrugated-metal cladding, has few precedents in the area.

They paid $170,000 for the 1.3-acre lot which is close to downtown but filled with topographical challenges, including slopes and a creek, which necessitated the home’s meandering shape. So far, they have spent about $650,000 to build, and plan to move into the home in May, they said.

The Pierson/Choi home could fetch about $800,000 to $1 million, said Jeff Rupkalvis, owner of Dwell Real Estate in Carrboro. “It’s as unique a home as I’ve seen in Carrboro,” he said. Most homes in the area follow the traditional “five-four-and-a-door” format of five windows on the top floor and four on the ground level with the front door in the middle, he said… CLICK HERE to read the entire article

By Mike Welton  •   Photos by Keith Isaacs

Fed up with the public nature of life in suburban North Carolina., a couple approached architect Arielle Schechter with a desire for privacy.

“They lived in a soul-deadening development in Chapel Hill and they were climbing the walls for lack of freedom and privacy from their neighbors,” she says. “People were walking by and telling them what to do with their yard.”

So they bought a wooded lot in Pittsboro to escape.

Schechter gave them a 2,053-square-foot home with two bedrooms, a small study that could be a third, and two baths. It’s opaque on the front and transparent toward the rear.

“There’s a veil of cypress to shield them,” she says. “On the south side, it breaks free with a big porch…” READ MORE 

By Lucy Wang  •  Photos by Keith Isaacs

When a couple decided to “break free” from their cookie-cutter home and realize their long-awaited eco-friendly dream home, they turned to Chapel Hill-based architect Arielle Condoret Schechter to bring their vision to life. With their grown son now out of the house, the couple wanted to downsize to a simple modernist home where they could peacefully age in place. Nestled in a secluded place in the woods of Chatham County, North Carolina, the resulting sustainable home is custom-designed to meet all their needs, from achieving net-zero energy to its modernist design with architectural elements inspired by the Netherlands-based De Stijl movement of the early 1900s. READ MORE

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First-time homeowner Tameka Evans and BuildSense partner Randall Lanou during construction of her now-completed Habitat for Humanity home. (photo courtesy BuildSense)

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The award-winning BuildSense team of architects and contractors watched with pride as members of Durham’s Habitat for Humanity handed Durham resident Tameka Evans and her three children the keys to their new, well-built house in a safe, new neighborhood when the 2019 Durham Home Builders Blitz concluded last month.

In just one week, June 14 – 21, BuildSense and the Durham Building Company completed construction on two Habitat houses on Barton Street. Along with trade partners and vendors each company works with on a regular basis, the teams donate the majority of the labor and materials involved as well. The Evans’ house is one of those two.

“I can’t wait to send my kids outside to play in our new neighborhood,” said Evans who, along with her oldest son, has helped build other Durham Habitat homes as well as their own.

“Community stewardship is one of our BuildSense values and Durham Habitat for Humanity is an organization that we love,” said BuildSense company lead, Randy Lanou. “They have a mission that we strongly support, and we are quite fond of their entire team. It’s very easy to say yes to building the sweet home that Tameka and her family purchased.”

The Home Builders Blitz is a partnership with Habitat for Humanity of Durham and the building industry to build homes for qualified Durham residents. Each professional homebuilder builds one house in a seven-day period.

“I wish they all could be done this quickly,” said Durham Habitat executive director Blake Strayhorn. “That would solve a lot of our affordable housing problems in Durham.”

The BuildSense team is comprised of an independent general contracting company (BuildSense, Inc) and an independent architecture firm (BuildSense Architecture, PC) working together in the company’s office and shop in Durham.

Under the leadership of partners Randall Lanou, Erik Mehlman, AIA, and Leon Meyers, giving back to the community is a regular aspect of the BuildSense culture. The team has participated in previous Habitat Builders Blitzes and has donated two trucks to Durham Habitat.

Habitat for Humanity of Durham brings people together “to build homes, hope and community,” believing that “all of our neighbors should have a safe, decent and affordable place to call home.” For more information on Durham Habitat and Habitat Home Builders Blitz, visit www.durhamhabitat.org.

To learn more about BuildSense and its community outreach endeavors, visit www.buildingsense.com and follow the company’s Facebook page.

About BuildSense

Located at 502 Riggsbee Avenue in downtown Durham, NC, BuildSense fosters delightful, healthy, and sustainable living. BuildSense has been serving families in the greater Triangle Region of North Carolina since 1999. They have received consistent recognition as one of the best design-build companies in the area, and as a national leader in smart and sustainable building and business practices. Their projects regularly earn local, state, and regional design awards. For more information: www.buildsense.com.

“California cool meets manicured elegance at Sixty Beverly Hill…This modern Beverly Hills hotel blends upscale comfort with custom made furniture and unexpected design elements.” – Hospitality Online.com

The project involved renovating the exterior and interior of an eight-story hotel, including new roof-top bar and pool levels. It was completed in phases. Built on the bones of a 1960s Best Western motel, our goal is for the 92,000-square-foot Sixty Beverly Hills Hotel and Bond Street restaurant to capture the sophisticated cool of late ‘70s and ‘80s design as well as the casual elegance of California modernism. READ MORE

After receiving Best of Houzz® awards in the Customer Service category for five consecutive years (2015 – 2019), Chapel Hill-based “green” architect Arielle Condoret Schechter, AIA, can now add Top Rated Local® Architect in North Carolina to her growing list of accolades.

Top Rated Local® (TRL) is a national partnership dedicated to finding and promoting businesses, trades, and professionals that excel in overall customer/client experiences. TRL tracks, scores, analyzes and ranks them according to how well they satisfy the “five pillars” of customer experience —  quality, value, timeliness, experience, and satisfaction – as expressed in customer/client reviews and ratings on popular, verified sites. For architecture ratings, the verified sites include Houzz, Facebook, and Google. The top rating at each site is five stars.

Schechter is best known for her modern, custom-designed, Net Zero/Net Positive houses that complement natural landscapes throughout central North Carolina. Ranging from 400 to 6000 square feet, Schechter’s houses are always featured on the annual Green Home Tour sponsored by the Home Builders Association of Orange, Chatham, and Durham counties.

She’s received international attention for her Micropolis Houses®, a collection of modern, sustainable, ultra-small house plans she designed. She sells the plans as they are or customizes them for specific clients. In fact, several of her completed and under construction houses are modified versions of Micropolis® plans.

And as rave online reviews from her clients attest, Schechter has gained a reputation for leaving a string of happy homeowners across central North Carolina.

“Of 25 ratings and reviews posted on verified review sites, Arielle Schechter has received dozens of reviews and an average rating of 5.00 stars. This earns her a Rating Score™ of 96.00,” said Rachael Walsh of Top Rated Local®. “That makes her the 2019 Top Rated Local® architect in all of North Carolina.”

In an article on www.topratedlocal.com, Schechter attributes her positive reputation to her sincere commitment to customer service, which she defines as “paying attention to the details, staying in touch with clients, being available for clients and supporting them at all times, making the process smooth, and caring deeply.” Myriad online reviews reveal the success of her commitment. For example:

“My husband and I have been living in our new modern, ‘green’ net-zero home…,since May [of 2018]. I am every bit as delighted with it — and even more so now that we are living in I — than from when Arielle first designed it. Arielle designed a home that is uniquely ours by listening to both what we wanted and needed in our home…Through Arielle, our ‘dream home’ has become a reality. We couldn’t be happier!”

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“Arielle… is a seasoned professional with an eye for detail second to none. She never left our side throughout the building process and was always quick to provide alternative suggestions along the way.”

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“I am amazed at how efficient [the plan] was! You literally put in everything we asked for, with no wasted space at all. I loved it, and still do.”

For more information on Top Rated Local® go to www.topratedlocal.com.

For more information on Arielle Condoret Schechter, visit www.acsarchitect.com.

About Arielle Condoret Schechter:

Arielle Condoret Schechter, AIA, is a licensed, registered architect based in Chapel Hill, NC, who specializes in Modernist, energy-efficient buildings with a focus on Passive houses, Net Zero/Net Positive houses, and Micropolis Houses®, the collection of tiny houses she designed. Her residential projects range from 400 to 6000 square feet. She is a lifelong environmentalist and began practicing green design long before it became mainstream. She is also a lifelong animal advocate. She lives in Chapel Hill with her husband, Arnie, and an assortment of foster animals in the Modern, sustainable house she designed for them. For more information:  http://www.acsarchitect.com/.

Hosted by the Northern Virginia Fine Arts Association

Frank Harmon, FAIA, a multi-award-winning architect from North Carolina and the author of the new critically acclaimed book Native Places: Drawing as a Way to See, will be in Old Town Alexandria, VA, on May 17th and 18th, sponsored by the Northern Virginia Fine Arts Association (NVFAA). Harmon will give a lecture focused on his book and his reasons for writing it on Friday the 17th at 7 p.m. in the Athenaeum on the corner of South Lee and Prince streets. On Saturday the 18th beginning at 10 a.m., he will lead an Urban Sketching Workshop around Old Town. Participants will also gather at the Athenaeum.

Both events are free and open to the public. However, the NFVAA asks those interested in either or both to email admin@nvfaa.org. Participation in the Urban Sketching Workshop is limited.

Published by ORO Editions, Native Places: Drawing as a Way to See is a collection of 64 of Harmon’s watercolor sketches – some he drew over 30 years ago — paired with brief essays he’s written about architecture, nature, everyday objects, and ordinary places. The pairs first appeared in his popular online journal NativePlaces.org.

The sketches in Native Places convey the delight the architect finds in these places and things. The short essays, inspired by the sketches, offer his fresh interpretations of what most people take for granted. His goal with both the online journal and the book is “to transform the way we see,” he says, and to promote his belief that hand drawing offers “an opportunity to develop a natural grace in the way we view the world and take part in it.”

To that end, he will lead 15 sketching enthusiasts around Alexandria’s picturesque Old Town for the same sort of urban sketching workshop that has proven popular when he’s conducted it at Auburn University’s renowned Rural Studio in New Bern, Alabama; in Asheville and Raleigh, North Carolina; and elsewhere.

“We are very excited to have Frank Harmon come to the historic Athenaeum for two wonderful programs,” said NVFAA’s Executive Director Veronica Szalus. “We’re looking forward to hearing Frank read from his book and share his engaging insights on sketching and the urban environment during the lecture, then show us how to learn to truly see the world around us through sketching during the Saturday workshop. It’s going to be a great weekend.”

Native Places: Drawing as a Way to See will be available for purchase from the NVFAA. For more information on the book and its author, visit nativeplacesthebook.com..

An art gallery, historic landmark, and home of the NVFAA, the Athenaeum is located at 201 Prince Street, Alexandria, VA 22314 (703.548.0035).