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Located in an unexpected cul-de-sac tucked just off of Chinoe Drive in the Warrenton Woods neighborhood, this unique contemporary home built in 1979 is considered by its owners to be their “country house in the city.”
Surrounded by a mature tree canopy, a babbling stream that flows under the home’s living room during wetter months, natural stone hardscaping, and multi-level decks and walkways that play off of the natural slope of the ground, the property gives off a sense of being miles outside the city, even though it is located minutes from New Circle Road. With the residential habitat relying heavily on the natural landscape, the property is reminiscent of the “organic architecture” concept made famous by architect Frank Lloyd Wright – or, on a more local level, the work of the late Lexington architect Richard Isenhour, who designed a neighboring home on the street.
“There’s a little bit of a wildness to it,” the homeowners said. “We’re trying to preserve that idea and not make it look too over-cultivated.”
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To that end, the owners have worked closely with a handful of different landscape experts since they bought the home, including John Michler, who has helped incorporate lots of hostas and other native plants; Mark Arnold of M2D Design Group, who has helped oversee much of the stone work on the property; Scott Campbell of Scott Campbell Designs, who oversaw much of the hardscaping and backyard makeover; and Dave Leonard of Dave Leonard Tree Specialists, who has worked with the homeowners to preserve as much of the natural canopy as possible.
“We knew when we moved in that one of the ideas of moving into a place like this was to be a good steward of the property,” the homeowners said. “The house was built in a way to try to preserve as many of the trees as possible – not just here, but in the rest of the neighborhood as well.”
Deferring to the natural landscape appears to be a very intentional move on the part of the original developers, according to architect Clive Pohl, who has worked with the homeowners on a “piece by piece makeover” alongside his partners at Pohl Rosa Pohl, with much of the local contracting work coming from Jim Smith at Showplace.
“There is kind of a modern sensibility back there that’s not present in a lot of Lexington,” Pohl said of the neighborhood. “And a lot of what (the homeowners) chose to do is in keeping with that original idea.”
Pohl and his business partner Graham Pohl, an architect at the firm, both agree that fully incorporating the natural landscape into the home’s design may not have been entirely realized by the home’s original builders, however.
“The curb appeal of the house was minimal (when the current homeowners purchased the home) because of the way the entry had been treated,” said Graham Pohl, referring to an entry that is now marked by an elegant wood and steel bridge that creates a sleek and harmonious path straight across the natural slope of the yard to the front porch and door. The original path to the door, which consisted of a series of zig-zagging rectangle decks, was largely damaged by the 2003 ice storm just months after the homeowners moved in – providing them with an impetus to put the remodel vision that they had already started concocting with Pohl Rosa Pohl on the front burner.
Another key element of the remodel was the detached screened-in back porch, where the homeowners spend a significant amount of their time. Situated in the middle of a sloping backyard that the couple and their landscapers have worked hard to recover from infestation of honeysuckle and other invasive plants, the porch “opens up in such a way that it captures the forest ... and makes you part of it,” said Clive Pohl, who designed the outdoor room.
“It very deliberately departs from the geometry of the house,” he said, adding that situating the porch a couple of steps below the home’s main floor and rotating the angle from that of the house were intentional components to highlight that departure, contributing to a sense of arrival or destination once you arrive at the outdoor room.
The natural landscape of the backyard is brought inside the main floor of the home thanks in large part to a complete kitchen remodel also designed by Pohl Rosa Pohl (primarily a project of Krisia Rosa, another principal of the firm). Large panes of glass face the wooded backyard, inviting in the natural light and scenery, and a blend of wood, metal, granite and steel materials appeal to the couple’s aesthetic taste, which they say fancies contemporary design while straying from the austere.
“The big challenge of the kitchen was to make it work in a two-story cathedral space and yet to have the sort of intimacy that you want in a gathering space,” said Pohl, referring to the vaulted ceiling of the kitchen, which gives way to the upstairs loft space. The architects responded to that challenge by suspending an oversized translucent panel with track lighting over the breakfast bar, which they refer to as “the cloud.”
“The translucent cloud still allows you to perceive the big volume, but brings it down to a human scale,” said Pohl. “When you’re hanging out around the breakfast bar in the kitchen, there’s an intimacy that feels comfortable.”