Boulder in Colorado, United States, has a semicommune, which is a collaboration between Rich Sands, a builder, and an architecture firm. The three houses, which are part of the commune, reflect design collaboration, writes Penelope Green.
Good design is often defined as an elegant solution (or a series of elegant solutions) to a complex equation whose variables include space, money, time and human behaviour. Also personal biography, history, taste and municipal law.In Boulder, Colo., an ecosystem still fizzy with tech and biotech startups, five members of three households are cohabiting, sort of, in a nifty example of that principle, in three town houses built on a small lot west of Boulder's downtown area with startling views of the Flatirons, the nearby mountain range.
This semicommune is a collaboration between Rich Sands, an industrial psychologist turned builder, and Arch11, a local architecture firm. It is located in a historic district three or four blocks from the edge of town now officially known as West Pearl, though Sands jokingly refers to it as "WeBo" (for West Boulder). In the last decade and a half, Sands and E J Meade, a principal at Arch11, have been deploying their particular brand of sometimes rustic, always clever modernism in nearly every neighbourhood of the city.
Their 40-odd projects range from modern farmhouses to suburban "lofts," minimalist houses and one recent addition to a 19th-century mining cabin that was wrapped in black asphalt. Sands was looking to establish the reputation of his company, Hammerwell, with a few spec projects in Boulder.
In town one day to interview architects, he wandered into an industrial building that appealed to him. There was a foreign-car repair business on one side and on the other, Meade's office ."Hey, anyone want to design a few buildings?" Sands remembered calling out. Meade answered in the affirmative, Sands cancelled all his appointments and they talked for hours, discovering in each other, as Sands put it, a similar kind of "design idiocy."
Starting off with two Their collaboration began with two side-by-side spec houses. While the first was still under construction, Bob Bush, a principal of a graphic design studio, and his wife, Dianne, who worked in law offices and as an event planner, bought the second while it was still a hole in the ground.
They entered into a curious arrangement with Sands: He agreed to sell them the house, but they would have no say in the finishes - though Sands promised to avoid any colours they didn't like.
"Why were the Bushes so relaxed about it? The first spec house was a terrific calling card, Bob Bush said. "It was just really cool," he said.
"Rich was very upfront. He said, 'I'm a new builder in Boulder and I want to establish my reputation. I know what I want to do. If you don't want to give me that kind of freedom, then I wouldn't do this." That was the beginning of a long relationship in houses.
In 2004, about seven years into that relationship, the Bushes sold their first Hammerwell-Arch11 house and moved into a house Sands had taken in trade for one of his spec houses, and had been living in with his wife. Built in 1982, and untouched by Sands, "it was cool in its own way," Bush said.
By 2010, the Bushes, who are now 68 and 65 and retired, were planning to downsize yet again. (The Bushes have built five of the six houses they have lived in and clearly have an appetite for renewal. That was when Sands approached them with a plan.
The Sandses were also ready to downsize. Sands had found a lot zoned for three units, an unusual zoning scenario in Boulder, which tends to support mostly single-family buildings. To find a lot that was not restricted, Sands said, was rare. He had been eyeing the lot for some time, watching its price drop as it changed hands. Eventually, a developer who had bought it in foreclosure agreed to turn it over to him for about $600,000.
Around the same time, Sue Heilbronner, a federal-prosecutor-turned-Internet-entrepreneur, moved to Boulder for a job as chief growth officer for a cloud-based platform for managing small businesses. She had fallen in love with the Hammerwell-Arch11 aesthetic, having seen their houses around town.
There was one in particular, she said, "that was the most magnificent house I'd ever seen, but it was too big, and too expensive. I just decided the day I met him that I was going to find some way for Rich to touch my home."
Third dimension
Heilbronner, 46, knew about Sands communal lot project, but he rebuffed her at first when she had asked to be a part of it. A few months later, though, he emailed her to say he had one slot left, and would she like it? There were no drawings, there was not even a contract, but she agreed without hesitation. "Everyone I knew told me I was an idiot to yoke myself to four other people I barely knew. But to me it felt not remotely unusual or crazy. I get to work with a builder I admire - who, by the way, gets to be my next-door neighbour - and an architect who is totally cutting edge. We were totally aligned in what we were going to create, so it was perfect."
Sands doesn't remember why he initially put Heilbronner off. "I could have held her off at first just to make sure she truly was interested and that she was willing to live with what I came up with design-wise. I also might have been buying time to talk with the Bushes to discuss how Sue would fit into the mix."
The three houses have a 'Case Study House' feel about them, with their flat roofs, open-plan living areas and glassy expanses. Since the 9,800-square-foot lot was zoned for a 50 per cent floor-area ratio, Sands and Meade had 4,900-square-feet to divvy up among the three houses.
They carved out space underneath the lot to create three 2-car garages and room for storage and mechanical equipment, which, since they were underground, were not included in the floor-area calculus. Each house would be two bedrooms with 2 1/2 bathrooms.
The Sandses' unit is about 1,500 square feet and separated by a common garden from the Bushes', which is about 1,600 square feet, and Heilbronner's, which is slightly larger. Instead of planting three townhouses in a row on the rectangular lot, Meade angled them to grab the Flatiron mountain views, giving each house a glass corner.
The Sandses' house is aligned with the top of the rectangle - the short bit - at the north end. The Bushes' house and Heilbronner's sit along the base, fitting one on top of the other like train cars in a rail yard. It is a clever and elegant land-use solution, spatially economical, practical and lovely.Each house cost about $1 million, though Heilbronner's was slightly more. Sands, as is his habit, did the finishes for his and the Bushes' houses.
Heilbronner asked Meade to design her interiors, and she chose features and flourishes (like a startling open staircase) that were more expensive.The five cohabitants, as we might call them, moved in in late August.
Bob Bush pointed out that in their last house they had downsized financially but not spatially. In this house, he said, "we've upsized financially but decreased square footage." As for Dianne Bush, she said she worried that their taste was not edgy enough for Sands, and that he was disappointed when he came over.
Sands said, jokingly, that he always tells them: "Your interiors should fit you. Pick what you like, and I'll tell you if you're screwing it up too much." And Heilbronner, who travels extensively for work, is happy to have a house that she doesn't have to fret about (thanks to her close neighbours) and one that is also visually arresting - even autobiographical, as she put it. "It feels," she said, "just energetically perfect. I walk in and think, 'Really? I get to live here?"'
Good design is often defined as an elegant solution (or a series of elegant solutions) to a complex equation whose variables include space, money, time and human behaviour. Also personal biography, history, taste and municipal law.In Boulder, Colo., an ecosystem still fizzy with tech and biotech startups, five members of three households are cohabiting, sort of, in a nifty example of that principle, in three town houses built on a small lot west of Boulder's downtown area with startling views of the Flatirons, the nearby mountain range.
This semicommune is a collaboration between Rich Sands, an industrial psychologist turned builder, and Arch11, a local architecture firm. It is located in a historic district three or four blocks from the edge of town now officially known as West Pearl, though Sands jokingly refers to it as "WeBo" (for West Boulder). In the last decade and a half, Sands and E J Meade, a principal at Arch11, have been deploying their particular brand of sometimes rustic, always clever modernism in nearly every neighbourhood of the city.
Their 40-odd projects range from modern farmhouses to suburban "lofts," minimalist houses and one recent addition to a 19th-century mining cabin that was wrapped in black asphalt. Sands was looking to establish the reputation of his company, Hammerwell, with a few spec projects in Boulder.
In town one day to interview architects, he wandered into an industrial building that appealed to him. There was a foreign-car repair business on one side and on the other, Meade's office ."Hey, anyone want to design a few buildings?" Sands remembered calling out. Meade answered in the affirmative, Sands cancelled all his appointments and they talked for hours, discovering in each other, as Sands put it, a similar kind of "design idiocy."
Starting off with two Their collaboration began with two side-by-side spec houses. While the first was still under construction, Bob Bush, a principal of a graphic design studio, and his wife, Dianne, who worked in law offices and as an event planner, bought the second while it was still a hole in the ground.
They entered into a curious arrangement with Sands: He agreed to sell them the house, but they would have no say in the finishes - though Sands promised to avoid any colours they didn't like.
"Why were the Bushes so relaxed about it? The first spec house was a terrific calling card, Bob Bush said. "It was just really cool," he said.
"Rich was very upfront. He said, 'I'm a new builder in Boulder and I want to establish my reputation. I know what I want to do. If you don't want to give me that kind of freedom, then I wouldn't do this." That was the beginning of a long relationship in houses.
In 2004, about seven years into that relationship, the Bushes sold their first Hammerwell-Arch11 house and moved into a house Sands had taken in trade for one of his spec houses, and had been living in with his wife. Built in 1982, and untouched by Sands, "it was cool in its own way," Bush said.
By 2010, the Bushes, who are now 68 and 65 and retired, were planning to downsize yet again. (The Bushes have built five of the six houses they have lived in and clearly have an appetite for renewal. That was when Sands approached them with a plan.
The Sandses were also ready to downsize. Sands had found a lot zoned for three units, an unusual zoning scenario in Boulder, which tends to support mostly single-family buildings. To find a lot that was not restricted, Sands said, was rare. He had been eyeing the lot for some time, watching its price drop as it changed hands. Eventually, a developer who had bought it in foreclosure agreed to turn it over to him for about $600,000.
Around the same time, Sue Heilbronner, a federal-prosecutor-turned-Internet-entrepreneur, moved to Boulder for a job as chief growth officer for a cloud-based platform for managing small businesses. She had fallen in love with the Hammerwell-Arch11 aesthetic, having seen their houses around town.
There was one in particular, she said, "that was the most magnificent house I'd ever seen, but it was too big, and too expensive. I just decided the day I met him that I was going to find some way for Rich to touch my home."
Third dimension
Heilbronner, 46, knew about Sands communal lot project, but he rebuffed her at first when she had asked to be a part of it. A few months later, though, he emailed her to say he had one slot left, and would she like it? There were no drawings, there was not even a contract, but she agreed without hesitation. "Everyone I knew told me I was an idiot to yoke myself to four other people I barely knew. But to me it felt not remotely unusual or crazy. I get to work with a builder I admire - who, by the way, gets to be my next-door neighbour - and an architect who is totally cutting edge. We were totally aligned in what we were going to create, so it was perfect."
Sands doesn't remember why he initially put Heilbronner off. "I could have held her off at first just to make sure she truly was interested and that she was willing to live with what I came up with design-wise. I also might have been buying time to talk with the Bushes to discuss how Sue would fit into the mix."
The three houses have a 'Case Study House' feel about them, with their flat roofs, open-plan living areas and glassy expanses. Since the 9,800-square-foot lot was zoned for a 50 per cent floor-area ratio, Sands and Meade had 4,900-square-feet to divvy up among the three houses.
They carved out space underneath the lot to create three 2-car garages and room for storage and mechanical equipment, which, since they were underground, were not included in the floor-area calculus. Each house would be two bedrooms with 2 1/2 bathrooms.
The Sandses' unit is about 1,500 square feet and separated by a common garden from the Bushes', which is about 1,600 square feet, and Heilbronner's, which is slightly larger. Instead of planting three townhouses in a row on the rectangular lot, Meade angled them to grab the Flatiron mountain views, giving each house a glass corner.
The Sandses' house is aligned with the top of the rectangle - the short bit - at the north end. The Bushes' house and Heilbronner's sit along the base, fitting one on top of the other like train cars in a rail yard. It is a clever and elegant land-use solution, spatially economical, practical and lovely.Each house cost about $1 million, though Heilbronner's was slightly more. Sands, as is his habit, did the finishes for his and the Bushes' houses.
Heilbronner asked Meade to design her interiors, and she chose features and flourishes (like a startling open staircase) that were more expensive.The five cohabitants, as we might call them, moved in in late August.
Bob Bush pointed out that in their last house they had downsized financially but not spatially. In this house, he said, "we've upsized financially but decreased square footage." As for Dianne Bush, she said she worried that their taste was not edgy enough for Sands, and that he was disappointed when he came over.
Sands said, jokingly, that he always tells them: "Your interiors should fit you. Pick what you like, and I'll tell you if you're screwing it up too much." And Heilbronner, who travels extensively for work, is happy to have a house that she doesn't have to fret about (thanks to her close neighbours) and one that is also visually arresting - even autobiographical, as she put it. "It feels," she said, "just energetically perfect. I walk in and think, 'Really? I get to live here?"'