Design: Outside the Usual Box

One family proves there’s more to residential architecture than little pink houses.

Image credit: CityDeskStudio

Recommended by the Editor

Name That Architect

West St. Paul's Architecture Artist du Jour

By: Phillip Koski |   August 2011   |  From the print edition

John Cougar Mellencamp isn’t a noted architecture critic, but even he could see that the architectural quality of most American neighborhoods is pretty bland. Whether composed of brightly painted Victorians, beige stucco Tudor homes or a fleet of post-war “little pink houses,” American neighborhoods tend to be exercises in architectural conformity.

A lot of this has to do with the stylistic and economic mechanics of housing development. The simple analysis: Neighborhoods were typically built all at once on former farmland with the newest houses and the oldest homes erected no more than 10 years apart. Architectural trends tend to move slowly, so a 10-year construction period in building-design terms equals roughly a season and a half in Vera Wang’s world.

So when a new house with serious architectural cred and exposed concrete walls walks into a leafy Edina neighborhood of ramblers and two-story Colonials, people tend to take notice. Facing a park across the street, the minimalist, flat roof structure is a clear standout in a row of clapboard-sided, gable-roofed homes. The 21st century has arrived in Morningside.

For Ruth Ballach and Jim Diem (and their two boys), their new house represents a chance to start over in the same neighborhood where they’d lived for years, while pursuing their newfound passion for contemporary architecture and clean-lined interiors. In fact, Ruth, an associate creative director for Target, and Jim, a stay-at-home dad, love the sense of community and the easy walk to nearby shops so much that when they started scouting for a new home a couple of years ago, they limited their search to within a few blocks.

Intending to renovate the existing one-story rambler on the site, the family hired architect Christian Dean, a principal of the Minneapolis firm CityDeskStudio. Dean, also an adjunct instructor at the University of Minnesota School of Architecture, is referred to by his former students as “the rock star.” It’s an apt moniker, considering that he is tall and skinny and has painted his own house black. His house, covered in Dwell magazine a few years back and just a stone’s throw across France Avenue in Minneapolis, helped convince Ruth and Jim that Dean was their guy.

Early in the design process, however, inspections revealed that the house’s foundation was sinking into area’s substandard soils like the Tower of Pisa. Rather than scrap the project, the couple decided to stick with the lot, tear down the rambler, and build a new house from scratch. The site’s location across from ball fields and parkland was a huge selling point, especially for Ruth. “Our old house sat on a double lot, so we had lots of green space,” she says. “I just wanted to decrease the amount we had to personally take care of.”

The new house, while strikingly modern, is designed to be a good neighbor. While Edina has seen a scourge of monster homes wedged into small lots over the last several years, the new house’s size is modest, weighing in at a compact 2,000 square feet (above ground). The garage is set to the rear of the lot and is unattached, following the traditional pattern of development and reducing the overall bulk of the main house.

Respectful of the close proximity of neighbors, Dean was especially attuned to issues of privacy and views. On the front of the house, facing the street and park, large commercial-grade windows offer up uninterrupted views and access to morning sun. On the sides of the house that directly face adjoining properties, the windows are raised high on the interior wall to capture daylight while screening direct views to the kitchen and upstairs bedrooms. Facing the driveway, narrow vertical slots that cut through the first-floor concrete wall provide playful relief to an otherwise blank surface, and transform an otherwise windowless interior hallway with peek-a-boo glimpses of the outside.

In back, the first-floor concrete walls extend beyond the second story to create a semi-enclosed deck screened on three sides and overlooking the back yard. Here is where the house’s compositional gamesmanship is revealed. The concrete walls serve as a kind of base or pedestal against which various rooms are expressed as wood panel-clad boxes. The big box of the upstairs bedrooms sits square on the concrete base, and is complemented by smaller protruding boxes housing a mudroom in the back, and kitchen and living room alcoves on the sides.

Inside, the rooms are arranged around a central open staircase of chunky wood treads floating behind a screen of steel cables fastened to the underside of an exposed steel I-beam. Walls and cabinets are white; window frames are black. The floor is wood, and the whole space is flooded in daylight. In short, all the prerequisites of modern residential design have been checked, stamped and delivered. If the work of this “rock star” architect riles some of the neighbors who might have hoped for something a little more acquiescent and a little less concrete, maybe that’s okay. As the other rock star, John Cougar, put it, “Ain’t that America, something to see, baby?” Indeed, with modern gems such as this, it is.

Seeing, they say, is believing. If you are a modern house junkie (or a skeptic!) seize a rare opportunity to evaluate Ruth and Jim’s house up close—inside and out—during this year’s Homes by Architects Tour over the weekend of September 17-18. Now in its fourth year, the Homes by Architects Tour is organized by the Minnesota chapter of the American Institute of Architects and features 14 new and remodeled residences, from buttoned-down suburban manse to contemporary prairie retreats. For more information and to purchase tickets, check out homesbyarchitects.org