To anyone who passes off DC/Baltimore suburban architecture as traditional blah, take a look at THIS:

My jaw completely dropped when Margaret Korz sent me these pictures of her house in Clarksville, MD, a suburb of Baltimore and about 45 minutes from DC. I immediately wanted to know which preeminent architect designed it.

None, she responded in an e-mail. Would that be a problem? Turns out, when she and her husband were looking for property in 1970, they found these five acres in what was then the Boondocks. They had a modern sensibility — Margaret grew up 20 miles from Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin — and, she said, “I’ve been an architecture buff since I was child. I always loved houses.”

They initially investigated purchasing a pre-fab Deck House, but it turned out to be too expensive. So she and her husband designed their own dream house.  Forty years later, it still looks completely new and fresh. And Margaret is so passionate about it, she wrote me a three-page, single-spaced e-mail describing her influences, inspirations, and the way it was all constructed.

Inspirations for the house included Philip Johnson's Glass House in Connecticut and Mies van der Rohe's Farnsworth House in Illinois.

“Continuing in the vein of warmth and natural materials, we committed to the best quality materials — handmade brick with natural colors [in the rear of the house, not shown] since we couldnt’ afford stone — and clear red oak hardwood floors which we thought were easier to maintain than carpet.”

And rather than buying up lots of art, they clad the house in as much glass as was structurally possible, so the changing seasons of their gorgeous property provides all the visual beauty.

The plan of the first floor is completely open. The only door on the entire floor leads to the power room.

The house was constructed during the 1974 energy crisis, another era where “one could not help but think green,” Margaret wrote in her e-mail.” All that glass is tempered and insulated, and the largest glass wall is oriented toward the woods, which gets cool shade in the summer and, when the trees are bare, warming heat in the winter. They also incorporated more insulation than was necessary between the floors, behind the walls, and around the HVAC ducts.

The spiral staircase runs spans the house's three floors. There are built-in bookcases throughout.

When it came to planning the kitchen, Margaret told me, “I did not want dark wood [cabinets]. I did not want stuff with arches carved in the front of the doors. I wanted something that was light and durable.” That’s why she chose St. Charles cabinets, made of white metal. (In fact, that’s how Margaret found me, when I blogged about St. Charles last month.)

The kitchen includes two sinks and shelves that roll out -- common details in today's kitchen, but rare in the 1970s.

Upstairs, they created bedrooms virtually enclosed in glass, so their kids could live like they were in a treehouse. Margaret also includes lots of huge storage closets, because she was so frustrated by how every other house they had looked at had such puny storage space.

Ignore the furnishings for a moment, and check out those totally awesome hanging ball lights for the bedside tables! There is also another huge window to the left of the chair.

Now, if you are reading this post and thinking, “Wow, I really want that house,” guess what — you can have it! The Korz’s are putting the house on the market, as they are downsizing since their children have grown in moved out. Margaret is a real estate agent, and you can find all the details on her site right here.

She said it was really hard to make this decision,  but it will give a chance to some lucky person to snap it up.

“Generally, everyone — whether guests are repairmen — have this kind of wide-eyed jaw-drop upon entering, and often rush to the windows,” she wrote in her e-mail. “The house seems to energize people — I think that feng shui must be right.”

]]> http://dcbydesignblog.com/architecture/a-70s-modern-gem-in-clarksville/feed/ 6 http://dcbydesignblog.com/kitchenbath/st-charles-kitchens-mad-about-mod/ http://dcbydesignblog.com/kitchenbath/st-charles-kitchens-mad-about-mod/#comments Tue, 23 Feb 2010 05:05:11 +0000 Jennifer http://dcbydesignblog.com/?p=374

I was thrilled to see a story on the cover of the Washington Post Magazine this weekend about Susan Toffler’s Chevy Chase home, designed by the late modern architect David Condon and recently renovated with the help of Designer Susan Vallon. A lot of blogs have already re-posted this story, but what I am most focused on is the kitchen, full of vintage St. Charles cabinets.

Photograph by Gorden Beall

Photograph by Gordon Beall

I found out about this project last year when I was an editor at Washington Spaces, but The Post smartly snapped it up when the magazine folded in December.

Toffler’s original St. Charles kitchen is in good company: Frank Lloyd Wright used the cabinets at Falling Water in Pennsylvania,

Photograph via www.wright-house.com

and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe used them in the Farnsworth House in Illinois:

I had known about St. Charles from a visit to the Kitchen and Bath Industry Show a few years ago, shortly after the Viking Range Corporation bought it and revived the brand, which was founded in 1935.

“We took it back to its roots, and we re-launched it in its iconic state,” said Jim Gregory, the general manager of St. Charles who answered the phone himself when I called the company number today.

But rather than customers seeking a retro look, he said, St. Charles is seeing younger people who are after a thoroughly fresh design. “I think we’re seeing an extreme amount of interest from people in their 30′s and 40′s who are really into minimal design,” Gregory said.

So this is what you get today:

Images courtesy of St. Charles

Rather than a conventional toe-kick, St. Charles builds cabinets on either four-inch or six-inch legs, a European style that makes it look more like furniture.

Another think going for these sleek cabinets is that they are extremely eco-friendly. Jim tells me that the steel is 98 percent recyclable, and that 70 percent of them are made from already-recycled products.

AND, there are 23 colors to choose from:

St. Charles kitchens have been profiled in a number of publications, including House Beautiful:

House Beautiful photographs via St. Charles

A detail shot of the kitchen's wet bar

After writing this post, I’m filled with St. Charles envy — ahh, someday!

For those who want it today, the local dealer for the company is kitchen designer Nancy Thornett of Nancy Thornett Associates.