Designing and building a home is a deeply collaborative process, in which the architect, builders, landscape architects, interior designers, homeowners, craftspeople, and more come together to make a vision come true. Home 9 “Buckeye Point,” designed by Rehkamp Larson Architects, illustrates the way a high level of collaboration can result in a beautiful, finely detailed, well-crafted house.
All teams involved contributed to the refinement and artistic expression of Buckeye Point. As a testament to a successful collaboration, the same team was assembled in 2018 to do a light remodel on this same house that would better accommodate visits from an evolving family including grandchildren.
“A great collaboration makes the project so much more than any one of the team members could have done individually,” says Mark Larson, AIA, architect of the project.
Larson details just a few examples of how this teamwork shows up in the end result, such as in the foundation and board-form concrete walls. “The craftsmanship of the builder and the subcontractors is seen everywhere,” he says. “If you look closely at the interior and the exterior, you actually see all the boards that formed the concrete foundation walls. The sill of a window occurs right at the top of one of the boards, extending right into that jam. [See photo above.] Those are the kind of details that look like they just come together real easy but take an enormous amount of coordination and care.
“The relationship between the architecture and the landscape architecture is intense as well,” he notes. “We thought, as architects, about how this house should sit on the land and what the outdoor spaces should be like. But then the landscape architect took it even further by bringing in the right kind of huge boulders that could form the walls outside, and the landscape material that felt like it integrated into the woods, and so on.”
Architects are uniquely qualified to be at the center of the design process—striving to understand the goals of the homeowner, translating and refining the possibilities, documenting the established solution, and following the construction process through to completion. Architects bring great listening skills, professional training, design passion, and a collaborative process to engage the client, builder, interior designer, landscape architect, and makers to create a unified house tailored to the site.
“We like the idea that, in the end, everybody thought ‘it’ was their idea,” Larson adds. “You can’t really see where one expertise ends and the next one begins.”
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The 2020 Tour is supported by Pella Windows & Doors, White Oaks Savanna, Spacecrafting, Andersen Windows, Brooke Voss Design, DOM Interiors, Fritz Cabinetry, Frost Cabinets, Hagstrom Builder, InUnison Design, Kolbe Gallery Twin Cities, Martha Dayton Design, North Elevation, Otto Painting Design, Redpath Constable Interior Design, Redstone Architectural Homes, Showcase Renovations, Streeter Custom Builder, Synergy Products, and Welch Forsman Associates.
