Living By Design

The Daily Camera

August 12, 2005
Living by DESIGN
Local architect, artist's family home featured in magazine

Author: Story by Cindy Sutter Camera Staff Writer
Section: Living & Arts

On an oddly shaped piece of land, next to the constant hum of Foothills Parkway, stands a unique expression of style and substance, a sharp-angled mix of glass-tiled pizzazz and eco-friendly building materials that houses Boulder architect Joseph Vigil, his wife, artist Brandy LeMae, and their daughter, Carmen, 4.

The family, whose home is featured in the latest issue of Dwell magazine, moved into their own little patch of environmental chic in 2003, after a six-month building process and family project that saw Carmen getting her toilet training on a construction site Porta Potty. Vigil was the architect, and LeMae acted as general contractor for the home designed to meet their needs for both professional and personal space.

The result of their efforts is an open, contemporary living space with concrete floors, loft-style lighting and vertical rows of opera-style windows. The home has a cool, neutral aesthetic, punctuated by splashes of color in the form of accent walls and various pieces of art. In back of the open living space and kitchen are two bedrooms, each with a bath and large closet. The family, whose previous home was a 1957 ranch, was seeking a different look for this house.

"In our 1950s ranch, every room was different," LeMae says. "Here we wanted (the! new house) to have more of a gallery look."

The house's design and building materials were geared toward environmental sustainability, helping to win it inclusion in Dwell's Off the Grid section, which features homes using green building techniques and designs.

"I think the integration of the green aspects ... into the house without making it seem clunky or visually unappealing is a strong point of the home," says Dwell Associate Editor Amara Holstein, who wrote the article about the house.

For Vigil, the home was an interesting architectural challenge, starting with the lot itself, a parcel carved off from properties of owners next door and behind. The space, a long trapezoid, with an attached rectangle in front, was further complicated by the noisy parkway running alongside it.

"Because of the awkward shape, developers were not interested," LeMae says.

Vigil, whose firm is called VaST, designed a narrow building to fit the lot, using structu! ral insulated panels or SIPS and filled concrete blocks to provide ins ulation from both heat and cold, as well as sound. The west wall, which faces the parkway and the Flatirons needed to be thick to provide a noise barrier and allow the wall to absorb sun in the winter. But Vigil didn`t want to sacrifice the mountain views. To solve the problem, he created small, high windows that framed the mountains, but didn`t appreciably affect the insulation properties of the walls.

The 2,900 square-foot house is passive solar, with the front-facing south wall designed with an overhang to prevent sun from heating the house in the hot summer, but with windows that let in the heat in winter when the sun is at a lower angle in the sky.

The sunlight makes the room cozy in winter, Vigil says.

"It`s great to sit in the sun on the couch and read."

Radiant heat under the concrete floors make the house a comfortable place for bare feet.

In the summer, the ceilings, which are 12 feet high on the south wall, tapering to 10 feet at the ! back of the kitchen, allow the heat to rise, where it can be vented out of the upper windows. Windows in the basement let in cool, fresh air in the evening. At the end of the summer`s hottest week, the temperature of the room had risen to 86 degrees, but on most hot days, the room is a relatively comfortable 80 degrees in the worst of heat of the day.

The house has four bedrooms, although one of those is used for LeMae`s studio, 3½ baths and an office. Vigil and LeMae chose accessories and decorating flourishes with an eye to both aesthetics and budget, as well the environment. Kitchen cabinets are from IKEA, with eco-friendly aluminum-framed linoleum counters. Track lighting came from McGuckin Hardware and other sources. The couple calls their choices "bargain chic." They did, however, splurge on glass tile for the front of the house, the bathrooms and as a decorative accent for the stairs, although LeMae says they found a source for the tile that was much les! s expensive than the typical cost. They were able to save architecture , engineering and contractor fees of about $69,000. With $6,000 of donated labor from friends, the construction cost ended up at about $89 a square foot. The lot and utilities cost roughly $157,000, and the couple also spent $50,000 in city fees.

In another cost-saving, green touch, the light-colored, high-finish stairs are made of Glulam beams, which are manufactured from small trees, rather than old-growth logs. At the base of the stairs, a koi and goldfish swim in a built-in pond, adding the soft sound of flowing water to the open area.

"I feed them every morning," Vigil says of the fish. "It`s kind of a ritual to watch them eat."

In addition to a family area downstairs, the lower level has a conference room, bedroom, studio and office. In October, LeMae`s work will be on display during the annual Open Studios tour of local artists` work spaces.

Outside, the couple spent about $20,000 on landscaping, using water-wise Canadian blue fescue on their f! ront lawn and xeric plants in the back. The house is framed by trees planted by the previous owners of the land.

Neil Rosen, who lives next door and once owned part of the lot, says he was a little worried what might end up on the land when he and the other owner decided to sell.

"I didn`t want a big two-story house. I didn`t want a generic, developers` sort of house. I didn`t want a lot of trees cut," he says.

He`s pleased with Vigil`s design.

"I`m delighted," he says. "I like the way it sits on the lot. They built it for themselves. It wasn`t build for spec.

Vigil and LeMae are similarly happy.

"We were able to get everything we wanted," Vigil says.

Contact Camera Staff Writer Cindy Sutter at (303) 473-1335 or sutterc@dailycamera.com.

Captions:
A fish pond, pictured at left, sits below the stairs, right, on the lower level of the house Joseph Vigil and Brandy LeMae built over the course of six months. The house's design and building materials were geared toward environmental sustainability.
Brandy LeMae and Joseph Vigil sit with their daughter Carmen Vigil, 4, in the family/living room of their Boulder home.
Boulder architect Joseph Vigil and his wife, Brandy LeMae, combined environmentalism, practicality and style to create and build their home, which is featured in Dwell magazine.
Above, the Front Range and Flatirons can be seen through a window in the Vigil family home. The small windows allow the house to be energy efficient but still have a view of the mountains. Left, the family/living room is seen with top windows open. The windows are designed at that height to allow hot air to escape.