LUXURY HOME quarterly
FALL 2011
EBB & FLOW
Kohn pedersen Fox associates unveil their latest high rise concept in greenwich Village
composing a masterpiece Ken Tate invokes classic styles in the Stanford House
hot young thing
Rafael de Cårdenas’ moody, film-inspired rooms
DaLLas Dream team
Mark Molthan & his Platinum Series Homes
ARCHITECTS
ARCHITECTS
PROVIDING CONCEPTS AND PROGRAMS FOR DELUXE HOMES
LOVELY LOOKOUT Clear cedar rake boards with shingled sweeps in the foreground. The view from the master-bedroom deck (right) includes vistas of Block Island Sound, the Watch Hill lighthouse.
Watch Hill Craftsmen Work Magic Working with an old house requires understanding the past, McKinley said. For example, you can’t use as much glass as some people would like without compromising the Victorian aesthetic. He happily discovered local craftsmen who provided exceptional authentic work. Tom Buxton of T.F. Buxton Ltd. built the house. A master woodworker, Buxton created the flared eaves, the large wood arch on the main façade and the circular wood turret bay window.“Most builders would not be able to do this,” McKinley said. “It was a test of great prowess.”He was also impressed with Dotolo Brothers Custom Masonry, who learned from previous generations of Italian stone workers. They found and quarried Connecticut granite with its distinct coloration of yellows, greens and grays, McKinley said. They laid a foundation for the house with no apparent mortar and the stones so tight you couldn’t slip paper between them. They also built the homes’ many fireplaces.
COASTAL ARCHITECT REVIVES A PIECE OF RHODE ISLAND HISTORY by Susan Lahey The house belongs where it sits on the Atlantic coast, with weathered shingles, graceful wooden arches, and its organic collection of corners and curves. It feels like a ship or a barn that’s always been in this historic town. In fact, this shinglestyle house in Watch Hill, Rhode Island, has been around for 125 years. When it was built in 1886,
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shingle-style architecture was sweeping the coasts. Some believed that its simplicity was a backlash against the flamboyance of traditional Victorian design, but coastal architect Michael McKinley believes that the elaborate paint jobs and gingerbread of classic Victorian homes would have been no match for Atlantic storms.
Now, he focuses on coastal residential design, a specialty many architects avoid because it requires close collaboration with the client. His company designs both the exterior and the interior. “Some people really don’t like the idea of having to shop around for different people to do the design in the luxury home,” McKinley said. “Usually the interior takes just as long or longer to do as the outside.” Because of his expertise and unified design process, McKinley says that his firm usually gets the most difficult, complicated jobs. “No one ever comes to us and says ‘We want a simple house, located there.’” Not only are the projects inherently complex, but coastal areas present unique challenges such as newer zoning, environmental restrictions, storm-worthy structural design, aesthetic requirements, and, in a place such as Watch Hill, historic integrity. McKinley said that the owner of the Watch Hill house “wasn’t sure if we could keep the original building. And neither was I at first.” McKinley knew that if they had torn the house down, to meet modern code, the new home in its place would have been only two stories, instead of the original three. And it would have lost some of its magnificent ocean views. But they were able to save the house.
When the current owner’s grandparents bought the house in 1946, they did away with the shingles and clad the house in what McKinley called the “super materials” of the 1950s, aluminum siding and storm windows. A few years ago, their grandson decided to restore the old family vacation home, but he wasn’t sure how to tackle it.Fortunately, he contacted McKinley who is well versed not only in shingle style architecture, but in the persnickety requirements of the coastal building codes. McKinley, principal of Michael McKinley and Associates, LLC, in Stonington, Connecticut, specializes in luxury coastal homes. Originally from the Midwest, McKinley studied at Brown University and received his degree from Rhode Island School of Design. After school, he found design work in Boston and worked on high-profile projects such
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PHOTOS: KINDRA CLINEFF
Michael McKinley and Associates, LLC
as the Providence Convention Center and Hotel. He visited Stonington while working on a project and fell in love, both with the area and with a TV anchorwoman who would become his wife.
not be in the dining room. But from that point, the design moved with the family.” Technically, a shingle home describes only the home’s exterior siding. But by tradition, shinglestyle homes are informal and simple, with few windows and asymmetrical roof lines.The shingle style is a surface style that has been applied to Victorian, colonial, or other major architectural styles. Prominent features include deep recessed porches, eyebrow windows, diamond shingles, and asymmetrical informality. “There’s a sort of ramble and almost historical development within the house. It’s a very forgiving process,” McKinley explains. But while everyone is pleased with how the house turned out, it worked because they had plenty of time and leeway. “It was not a project for the faint of heart,” McKinley says.
OCEANFRONT The large deck off the master bedroom offers magnificent views of Block Island Sound and also provides shade to the patio below. From the allwhite beach-house bathroom there are dramatic ocean views from a pair of Marvin windows (marvinwindows. com) above the Kohler pedestal sink (kohler.com).
The owner had few set notions about what to do with it. He wanted a wing added. He wanted to modernize the kitchen, some bedrooms and bathrooms. And he rejected the “great room” concept.“We were actually able to incorporate the spirit of the (floor) plan,” McKinley said. “It is an old- fashioned Victorian plan. Instead of great rooms and big vistas, there are several parlors and rooms the kids could go to and have dinner and
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