2014 People’s Choice Awards – Unbuilt (Submittal)

Submittal for Unbuilt Category
Featuring: Turtle Creek Homeownership Residences

In this competition which took place at the Lane County Home Improvement Show, local architects and landscape architects present their featured projects in various categories, and the citizens of Eugene cast their vote for the best project in each category.

OUR HOME, OUR COMMUNITY

PROJECT:
Turtle Creek Homeownership Residences
Turtle Lane near Nantucket and Hatton Avenues, Eugene

OWNER:
Housing and Community Services Agency (HACSA) of Lane County

ARCHITECT:
Nir Pearlson Architect, Inc.:
Nir Pearlson, Rachel Auerbach, Roger Ota, Dan Abrahamson

LANDSCAPE ARCHITECT:
LandCurrent Landscape Architects

CIVIL ENGINEER:
Poage Engineering

STRUCTURAL ENGINEER:
Woodchuck Engineering

CHALLENGE

• Design a community of twenty low-impact, affordable, owner-occupied dwellings.
• Create a basic home prototype, with varying features that will foster homeowner pride.
• Conserve open land and resources wherever possible.

CONCEPTS

• Evolving from two prototypes, each home is unique with mirrored plan layouts, and contrasting roof forms.
• The street-facing entry leads into the great room where the kitchen, dining area, and living room overlap.
• Multiple openings and sheltered porches allow activities to spill outdoors, linking each home to its surrounding yard.
• An interior “organizing spine” includes the stairs, half-bath, storage closets, pantry, and utility chases.
• The bedrooms feature windows in two walls, high sloped ceilings, and open storage lofts.
• Two bays, clad in corrugated metal, add precious space on the interior and visual variety on the exterior.
• A dead-end lane was widened into a cul-de-sac, creating a vehicular / pedestrian neighborhood court.

SUSTAINABLE STRATEGIES

Footprint: The project’s density is 13.5 units per acre – significantly higher than the surrounding neighborhood.
Daylighting: The great room is illuminated from four sides; the bedrooms from two to three sides.
Resource Conservation: The simple building form, topped with just two shed roof planes, facilitates efficient, minimum-waste construction.
Durability: Fiber-cement and corrugated metal siding, and standing-seam metal roofing, make for a low-maintenance and long-lasting building envelope.

Entrepeneur: Nir Pearlson Architect

WHO: Architect Nir Pearlson was born and raised on a kibbutz in northern Israel—an agricultural cooperative steeped in social ideology and surrounded by farmland and wilderness. After high school, Pearlson served three mandatory years in the military. “Following the service, I took off my uniform, strapped on a backpack, and traveled extensively in Europe, Canada, the U.S., and South America,” says Pearlson. “I financed my travels with periods of work as a plumber, house painter, carpenter, and silversmith.” In the late ‘80s, Pearlson began his architectural studies in Bezalel, Israel’s oldest art academy. Pearlson and his wife later relocated to the U.S. where he continued his studies at the University of Oregon, earning a Bachelor of Architecture in 1995.

THE BIZ BUZZ: Following college, Pearlson set out to learn the profession by working with experienced, reputable architects. “In 2003, after eight years of work with commercial Eugene firms where I learned to manage large, complex projects, I felt I had sufficient experience to launch my own firm,” says Pearlson. Today, Nir Pearlson Architect provides a full range of architectural services, including site selection and assessment, design team leadership and coordination of consultant teams, site design, master programming and planning, space planning and interior design, and architectural design from the preliminary concept to the final details.

IN HIS WORDS: “Like all architects, I thrive on problem-solving and live by the credo of team work,” says Pearlson. “From sketching a building plan, to communicating with clients, leading my staff, and writing invoices, my professional world is a winding course of successive problems and resolutions.” Although some days and weeks are exhausting and even bruising, Pearlson says, “I find great fulfillment in the complex process of place-making: interacting with clients and contractors; devising utilitarian and aesthetical solutions; capturing and expressing the spirit of a place; and creating buildings and spaces that shelter and support people and community.”

Wonderful Whiteaker


A baker’s sweet remodel

By Bari Doeffinger
Photos By Lanny Olivier

WHEN MOST PEOPLE DECIDE they want a more spacious home, they pick up the real estate pages and start packing. But not Catherine Reinhart and her husband, Scott Gray. Reinhart, who owns Sweet Life Patisserie with her sister, and Gray, owner of Gray Brothers Construction, opted to stay in their home in the Whiteaker neighborhood—close to friends and Reinhart’s business—and build the addition of a lifetime.

Working with architect Nir Pearlson, engineer John Norrena, and Gray’s brother, Stuart, the couple transformed their 750-square-foot cottage into a 2,700-square-foot “urban contemporary craftsman.” With the environment and their budget in mind, Reinhart and Gray turned to friends, local businesses, and the internet to track down as many recycled materials, secondhand finds, and hand-crafted items as possible.

The project took place in two phases: for phase one, which began in the summer of 2006, the Gray brothers constructed a 16-by-20-square-foot guest cottage at the back of their property. In the spring of 2007, Reinhart and Gray moved into the finished guest cottage so that phase two, the remodel of their 1950s house, could begin.

Even though the house is more than triple its original size, it looks modest from the street. Pearlson designed the roof to slope down to the front yard, to keep the home “true to the cozy feel of the neighborhood.” the house’s shingles are made of ultra durable concrete, but their avocado-lime and cedar colors imbue the exterior with warmth.

The kitchen features the same avocado-lime shade plus cupboards, built by Roberts & Sons Fine Cabinetry of Eugene, of gummy cherry, a grade of cherry with dramatic, darkly-grained resinous pockets. The kitchen counter looks and feels like slate, but is actually an EcoTop made of bamboo, recycled wood fibers, and water-based resin by Klip Biotechnologies in Puyallup, Washington. A vertical beam harvested from a Port Orford cedar tree in the couple’s backyard provides support in place of walls: the kitchen, dining room, and living room are separated only by function, not by form.

In the living room, a chocolate accent wall emphasizes the contrasting blond and brunette shades of the hickory floorboards used throughout the first floor. Hickory was not the couple’s first choice, but after discovering the boards at Lumber Liquidators in Eugene and learning that hickory is one of the strongest hardwoods available, it became the ideal option.

Another boon in wood came from their friend Scott Landfield, co-owner of Tsunami Books and reclaimed lumber enthusiast. He alerted them to Medford High School’s disposal of eighty Douglas fir bleachers, which they trucked home for use as window and door trim. they also purchased recycled beams from nearby Bohemia Lumber and put them on triple duty: providing structure, first story ceiling, and second-story floor.

If the selection of materials seems left to chance, the design of the home was anything but. The couple wanted to preserve intimacy throughout the public spaces and attain privacy in the first-floor master bedroom. Pearlson achieved these goals by designing a loft which overlooks the open dining and living space, and by situating the bedroom at the back of the house.

A butter-tinted hallway connects the living room to the master bed and bath. In the master bathroom, gummy cherry cabinets peek out beneath a white EcoTop counter adorned with twin waterfall faucets, which rank among Reinhart’s favorite fixtures in the home. The couple tiled the shower floor with small round stones found on Craigslist. A cylindrical skylight by Solatube uses reflective material and a south-facing dome to concentrate the sun for light and warmth. A built-in cadet wall unit provides additional heat.

Beyond the bath, in the far corner of the house, the master bedroom epitomizes do-it-yourself ingenuity. Reinhart designed and constructed the couple’s maple bed frame in a woodworking class at Lane Community College. Inspired by the designs of pottery Barn and Crate & Barrel, her project cost one half to one fourth of what a catalog might charge. Reinhart and Gray found a sliding fir door on Craigslist, stripped it of paint, stained it, and hung it from a track across the doorway. Reinhart also sewed the chocolate-colored dupioni silk curtains draping across the windows and French doors that look out onto the backyard.

Upstairs, the loft both opens up and constrains the house, making it feel, in Pearlson’s words, “like a story and a half.” Along the stairs and loft, a slim cable rail, built by Fred Kelso of Iron Works Unlimited, visually connects the upstairs to the living room below. The stairs open out onto a recreation space consisting of a sofa, flat-screen television, and bar set against a cherry red wall. In the back of the loft the “dance room,” complete with gold disco ball and supported by doubled floor joists, provides extra room for entertaining.

In each front corner of the loft is an office: Reinhart’s has a Parisian motif and a desk of leftover black EcoTop. it overlooks the first floor, with access to a tiny balcony above the front yard. Gray’s enclosed office features the original counter from Sweet Life Patisserie as well as trim from the Port Orford cedar from their yard, and a cypress, a nod to Gray’s Louisiana roots.

Beyond the personal touches and support for local businesses is the couple’s practical side: keeping to their budget. They accomplished this not only by finding bargains and doing most of the renovation work themselves, but by choosing energy-saving windows and heating systems. Gray boasts that their argon-filled, low emissivity windows by Milgard are the “most efficient vinyl windows you can buy.” The couple installed an HVAC heating and cooling system, but often heat their home with a gas stove in the living room. Hot water is available during waking hours thanks to a timed recirculation pump.

Simply Green


Sustainably built McKenzie River home gives new meaning to “luxury living”

By Jessica Tuer
Photos By Lanny Severson

LAST YEAR’S AVERAGE new home measured nearly 2,500 square feet, according to the National Association of Home Builders, and the term “luxury home” is usually synonymous with rooms dedicated to each hobby and more built-in gadgetry than the space shuttle. But Joy and Doug Watson had a very different concept of luxury: they wanted a residence that was compact, modern, and effortlessly simple that would also be easy on the environment.

Two years ago, the couple asked Eugene architect Nir Pearlson to help them design and build their dream home on an impossibly sloping, forested, and rocky plot of land located on the outskirts of Springfield and overlooking the McKenzie River. Pearlson’s first challenge was to position the home perfectly—to maximize sunlight amid the tall firs, minimize sight and sounds of the road and neighbors, and capitalize on mossy basalt boulders covering the forested hillside, all while maintaining panoramic river views.

“I listened to the site, and the design was very commonsensical,” Pearlson says. “The orientation and the views was sight-generated understanding.” The result is a feeling that the modern 1,500-square-foot living space and detached garage actually belong there; it has become an interconnected part of its surrounding system of earth, light, and water.

A look at the front reveals that the main wing of the house is suspended above the ground on concrete piles, allowing the native terrain and plants to thrive uninterrupted underneath the living space. The view from the main room? The unspoiled McKenzie River flowing gently from east to west, framed by the towering trees—and not a man-made distraction in sight.

The entryway, like the rest of the house, is understated and graceful. The simple composition of rustic concrete floors, stucco colored walls, exposed steel hardware, and floor-to-ceiling glass windows is entirely inviting and elegant. But the interior, instead of attracting attention to itself (or its own beauty), highlights the beauty of the natural world outside. The centerpiece of the foyer isn’t an antique piece of furniture or Persian rug, but rather a giant window showcasing a backdoor micro-environment of green ferns and mosses.

To the right, behind a giant sliding door, is the master bedroom and bath area, with a shed roof that opens upward toward the south, toward the cool forested hillside and warming sunlight. The impressive great-room space opens expansively to the left of the foyer. Its fir-beamed ceiling with exposed black steel hardware opens upward toward the river view. A glass door opens to a wire-railed balcony with its own custom water sculpture that echoes the tranquil riparian sounds.

The home’s practical size and abundance of natural light aren’t its only environmentally friendly features; the Watsons also sought out recycled building materials. The nearly 6-inch-deep rigid insulation beneath the metal roof was purchased from BRING Recycling, and almost all of the interior window trim came from recycled high school bleachers.

“One of my goals as an architect is to bring as much sustainability to each project as possible,” says Pearlson. He points out that using durable, low-maintenance material everywhere in the home—such as the concrete, steel, and wood—means that resources can be devoted to making other systems in the home more efficient. The concrete floors, for instance, are radiantly heated via hydronic tubes (a heating system using circulating hot water) and a high-efficiency, on-demand water heater that can switch between gas and electric heat, depending on energy needs. The floor is insulated beneath the concrete slabs between stories for added efficiency. An infrastructure for both a rainwater collection system and a heat exchanger are built in, anticipating the occupants’ future needs.

A tour through this serene and modern home proves that with intelligent design, luxury doesn’t have to mean lavish, compact can feel spacious, and going green can simply be practical.