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An architect and a decor specialist devise a cool, creative downtown pad for entertaining.By Ellen Miller
Rod Collier and John Strachan’s downtown home is a true open house, with uncovered windows and an unfettered flow throughout the main level.
The 2,800-square-foot, three-bedroom, two-and-a-half-bath home, built last year in Herron-Morton Place, is also a haven the pair enjoys sharing with friends and family. Weekends resound not only with the conversation and music of dinner parties but with the ruckus of children playing make-believe on their uncles’ steel-beamed stairway and the second-floor bridge connecting guest rooms and master suite.
It was planned to be this way.
Collier, a commercial architect with MSKTD & Associates, spent six months designing this, his first house. Strachan, general manager of the Fashion Mall’s Williams-Sonoma Home store, one of the first in the country, lent his considerable interior decorating expertise to the project. From start to finish, the pair incorporated their fondness for entertaining the important people in their lives. “This was a labor of love,” says Collier.
Visitors see a statement of the couple’s priorities from the moment they walk past the front-porch glider and through the front door. Next to the rail-free open stairway is a sculpture Strachan and Collier bought themselves as a housewarming gift. The metal piece depicts an entwined mother, father, infant and three young children. “Art, music and food. Can you tell what we like?” asks Strachan as he and Collier guide a guest to the heart of their home while k.d. lang and Patty Griffin serenade through the whole-house sound system.
Six days after they moved in, Strachan and Collier hosted 143 people. They hadn’t even added the first-floor furniture, but the window seating and dining nook Collier designed provided ample perches. These features, along with a custom-built table split down the middle, combine for an ingeniously flexible dining room. The table seats 10 or 20, depending on how the halves are configured. Placing them lengthwise in front of a room-length window bench doubles the seating capacity.
Collier loves to cook and Strachan likes to bake, often while guests are near, so the kitchen was designed with two ovens and two dishwashers. Sinks a foot deep shield soiled pots and pans from view and keep surfaces clear. To reduce the need for upper cabinets and maintain clear sight lines, Collier designed an updated butler’s pantry for storage.
The home’s palette of tan, taupes, and burnt orange was picked from the dark-toned Michelangelo marble the owners chose for the master-suite bathroom.
The second-floor master suite and guest bedrooms are simultaneously separated and linked by the bridge, which also keeps the soaring 30-foot ceiling above the dining area from feeling overwhelming, says Micah Hill of The Re-Development Group, which built the house from Collier’s design in six months.
“Open ceilings are so big and so high, they can be a little unsettling,” says Hill. “That bridge puts the dining room ceiling in perspective.” Hill pegs the house’s architecture style as transitional, which means traditional elements have a contemporary feel. The exterior features a front porch and pitched gable roof. Materials include fiber-cement board, concrete, and cedar. Inside, the house is contemporary, says Hill, with clean lines warmed by materials like cherry wood.
The home fits well into the historic neighborhood, which had to approve the design, says Hill. “True historic preservation allows a neighborhood to tell the tale of what’s happened there,” he says. “New homes should respond to, but not mimic, history. It’s a new interpretation.”
Re-Development’s commitment to green construction practices complemented Collier’s approach. The architect carefully considered the narrow lot’s solar orientation and called for easily renewable bamboo for flooring, energy-efficient heating and cooling systems and windows, and long-wearing carpeting low on emissions of volatile organic compounds (VOCs).
Hill says one of the best ways to conserve resources is to start, as Collier did, with a timeless design. “That way, things won’t end up in a landfill in 15 or 20 years,” says Hill. “Half the reason people yank stuff out is because of putting things in that are trendy. Rod is able to look at marketplace trends and put them in perspective.”
But Strachan and Collier say the most timeless aspect of their home is how it shelters and delights their loved ones: “We love that we have people who call all the time and say, ‘Can we stay for the weekend?’”
Resources:
Builder: The Re-Development Group Inc., Micah Hill, 281-0506
Architect: Rod Collier, MSKTD & Associates, Inc., 917-1190
Interior Design: John Strachan and Sue Parrish, Williams-Sonoma Home, 816-4422
For a complete list of resources, see the Summer 2007 issue of Indianapolis Monthly Home, on sale at these locations.
