Houses of the Future
Will Cloister Owners
The house of the future belongs to Marilyn Mulloy and Dan Pattee -- and they don't even know it.
How could they? With its old-fashioned courtyard, tiny windows and a two-story turret that cries out for a damsel in distress, this isn't exactly most people's vision of life in the 21st century. Step into the dining room, and there's even a bust of Marie Antoinette staring at a ball-and-claw-footed mahogany table -- just like "Hearst Castle," says Mr. Pattee, a stockbroker, of the couple's Carlsbad, Calif., tract house.
Odd as it may seem, this could be the look of residential architecture in the new millennium. For years, everyone pictured futuristic houses like the Jetsons' -- all open and glassy. But architects are telling us to forget that. With the year 2001 nearly here, they are designing homes that resemble the fortresses and Spanish missions of yore. The style is inward-looking, with front-yard walls that keep out the neighbors and with tall, narrow windows that limit the light.
"Anybody we want to see our place, we invite in," says attorney Don Daniels, whose three-bedroom house in Murietta, Calif., has a walled-in courtyard -- even though it is located in a gated community.
In Scottsdale, Ariz., Saddleback Handcrafted Homes Ltd. is building a subdivision where all the houses will feature rounded turrets, private courtyards and tall windows in styles that developer Larry Kush calls "Mission and Tuscan." The homes range from $382,900 to $639,000.
Every era has its Zeitgeist, enshrined in sticks and bricks: The unassuming 1940s Cape Cod. The self-consciously modern '50s rambler. The at-war-with-itself '60s split-level. Architects and builders say the house of the next decade will reflect end-of-the-century anxieties about privacy and security. It will also be a rejection of the showy houses of the '80s, with their soaring ceilings, open floor plans and huge windows that invite passersby to peer in and check out the furniture. "The days of ostentatious-looking houses are over," Tucson, Ariz., builder David Baird says.
Of course, architects and builders always try to come up with new ways to make current houses seem outdated. After all, they sold homeowners on "conversation pits" and "rec rooms" a generation ago. And not everyone in the field is taking this approach, nor will every homeowner necessarily embrace it. "It sounds very dark and isolated," says Sharon Henderson, who lives in a faux-Victorian in Vienna, Va.
But the neo-fortress movement of the moment does seem to be popular, if only because it expresses a general mood these days: "Keep out." Just check out the features on architects' blueprints:
Twenty-First Century Turrets
The ultimate Gothic symbol is now a place for home gyms and offices. Mark Wilson, president of London Bay Homes Inc., Naples, Fla., recently built an $8 million, 14,000-square-foot house that has two turrets. One looms over the entry; the other rises near the garage and features a platform, circular stair and fireman's pole. "The client thought it would be a great for his grandchildren to be able to shoot their BB guns out the window, then slide down the pole," Mr. Wilson says.
The "Home of the Future," a concept house unveiled last year at the National Association of Home Builders convention in Dallas, presents an almost forbidding, plain brick face, punctuated by two stone turrets. "Turrets connote fortification and strength, plus they're a natural gathering place," says Santa Barbara, Calif., architect Barry Berkus, who designed the house. He says people are attracted to turrets these days because they evoke lonely, romantic symbols such as lighthouses and silos.
Still, turrets are "expensive to build, and it's difficult to place furniture in them," says William Scalise, a custom-home builder in North Huntingdon, Pa.
Narrower Windows
Big, round-top windows have become "tract-house cliches," says J. Robert White, principal and director of design for Scheurer Architects Inc. in Newport Beach, Calif. He says he uses long rectangular windows because they are "more in tune with human proportions."
Lorin Jacobson, vice president of design for Jacobson Homes Inc. in Chester Springs, Pa., says he recently put narrow windows in a new $1 million, 7,000-square-foot gray granite home because they "look much better with the 18th-century styles and 9-foot ceilings we're doing now."
Mr. Berkus, who put narrow windows in the Home of the Future, offers a similar explanation. "If you look at house facades throughout history, you'll see that they had more wall space and smaller windows."
Narrower windows may let in less outdoor light, but the upside is less faded furniture and more creative uses of artificial light. And San Jose, Calif., architect Robert Steinberg suggests an entirely different reason why some wealthy clients might prefer narrow windows. "They've amassed big art collections and need wall space to hang them," he says.
Inner Sanctums
Orlando, Fla., architect Don Evans says luxury homes are "closing up and walling up." Some new, U-shaped houses are built around driveways that double as recreation areas; others have walls that hide the home from the street and enclose a place for children to play. "It used to be that courtyard homes were just a Florida thing, borrowed from Latin American designs," Mr. Evans says. "But now I'm getting calls about them from all over the country."
At Ventana Canyon, a resort community in Tucson, Mr. Baird designed enclosed backyards sheltered by 6-foot-high solid concrete walls. In Warren Township, N.J., Dan LaZecchia, a foreign-currency options broker, and his wife Vicki, a homemaker, recently hired a landscape contractor to add walls of greenery to better hide their house and pool from view -- even though the newly built home already had stacked-stone retaining walls.
It was worth the six-figure cost, Mrs. LaZecchia says, to achieve complete privacy -- something they didn't have in their last home, built in 1988. "Then," she recalls with a shudder, "we always knew when our neighbors were home and when they were fighting."
Outdoor Media Centers
Outdoor rooms are becoming increasingly popular. Pool houses, pergolas, gazebos, even outdoor kitchens and bars are already popping up in upscale homes.
Knightsbridge Country Estates, a project that opened last fall in San Diego, goes a step beyond with its outdoor family room; each one has a fireplace and built-in media center with television and stereo, enclosed in a courtyard. The development's 60 homes are priced at an average $950,000 and have been selling quickly, says Rick Fletcher, a spokesman for the builder.
Newport, Ky., builder Raymond Biel and his wife Nancy, an interior designer, built a $1 million, 10,000-square-foot house for themselves with a three-story outdoor media room. The space has a shower, fireplace, gazebo with built-in television and kitchenette, a bar, a hot tub, a small pool and a waterfall and fountain. When there are fireworks in the distance in Cincinnati, Mrs. Biel says, "We can see the show live and watch it on television at the same time."
Defined Rooms
Just because open floor plans and soaring ceilings are expected to become passe, it doesn't mean that houses, or rooms, are getting smaller. Quite the contrary: There are simply more rooms, defined for specific purposes.
For instance, Mr. Evans, the Orlando architect, designed a "clutter" room, an arcade and a trophy hall for Los Angeles Lakers forward Robert Horry; separate tanning, training and hobby rooms for San Francisco Giants left-fielder Barry Bonds; and a snooker lounge, golf-cart garage and coffee room for professional golfer Ernie Els.
Even in houses built without a particular buyer in mind, rooms are becoming more defined. The $950,000 Carlsbad home of Ms. Mulloy and Mr. Pattee, in a subdivision called "the Ranch," has a "gathering room" just off the foyer. For a 10,000-square-foot spec home that was on the market at $3.3 million and currently is under contract in New Vernon, N.J., builder John Maione, designed an "entertainment wing" with a series of separate rooms for playing cards, billiards, piano or TV. "Whether they're entertaining or just with the family, people tend to split off into groups," Mr. Maione says. "Those who want to talk don't want to be in an open great room with others who are blasting the TV."
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