Innovative plans, grand designs on display on AIA Houston Home Tour
It’s not unusual for passers-by to knock on the door of Brett Zamore’s office. It’s a tiny, 12-footwide building with a butterfly-style roof in a busy part of the Heights, and they’re curious to know what’s going on inside.
No one will need to be shy about asking Saturday-Oct. 22, when the annual AIA Houston Home Tour includes Zamore’s 504-square-foot pre-fab prototype along with nine other homes that range up to an 8,369-square-foot home in Piney Point.
In between are several homes in the 3,000- to 4,000-square-foot range, proving that you don’t have to live in a mansion to live in a well-designed home. The annual juried event features homes that include modern, midcentury and traditional styles, and for families ranging from couples who are downsizing to those with young children.
On one end of the spectrum is Zamore’s new pre-fab concept that he calls zFab Housing. Though meant to be a home, Zamore uses it as office space for his small architectural firm, Brett Zamore Design.
On the other end is the Piney Point home designed by Dillon Kyle Architects for Julia and Matthew Rigdon.
Together, the 10 tour sites are scattered throughout Houston, with four in the Heights and others in Memorial, Meyerland, Montrose, Highland Village and West University Place. It even includes one of Hines’ latest projects, The Southmore, a Midtown luxury apartment high-rise that opened in January. Its exterior was designed by Munoz + Albin Architecture & Planning, and its interiors were done by Mayfield and Ragni Studio, MaRS.
Zamore is the first to admit that his small building isn’t for everyone; it’s part of a lineup of services from this zFab structure, plus a collection of seven kit homes and the custom residential work that he does all over town.
His smallest kit home is even tinier — just 384 square feet — and he’s sold these plans to people who use them for an art studio and a mother-inlaw suite. Other designs go up to more than 2,300 square feet.
But it’s his 504-square-footer that’s opening to the public next weekend, a building that not only made it into this juried tour but also recently won a first-place AIA Houston Design Award.
“It’s definitely an honor and helps market it. There’s no doubt it makes you feel like you have something good here,” Zamore said.
The front is its living room, and the dining area is a counter off the spare kitchen’s island in the center. There’s a no-nonsense bathroom with an Ikea cabinet, then in the back, a pocket door slides out to provide privacy for the 12-by-10-foot bedroom.
Every part of it is meant to reduce its carbon footprint and support local businesses. It has easy-to-get Baltic birch plywood and windows and doors that are made or purchased locally. Its frame is Douglas fir, all forested in Texas. Even its front and back porches are made of green-forested Cumaru decking.
It’s also elevated 3 feet so that the crawl space allows for better drainage — there’s more bare land for heavy rains to dissipate.
Kyle’s design for the Rigdon family in Piney Point is just as thoughtful, but on a different scale and budget.
Julia and Matthew Rigdon and their three children — ages 4 to 9 — use every inch of their 8,369-square-foot home.
Matthew owns Jackson Offshore Operators, which provides marine services to the offshore gas and oil industry.
Julia always wanted to build a house, but neither she nor her husband had worked with an architect. They connected with Kyle because they liked a home he’d designed for friends.
The home and the site, lush and green, are right in Kyle’s wheelhouse. Indoor-outdoor themes repeat in his work, so big windows provide great views, and materials — brick, concrete, steel and glass — are found on the interior and exterior.
“I tend to do things that string out on the landscape to create a courtyard. It’s an attenuated, long, C-shaped house,” Kyle said. “I like a strong presence of materials. It’s not fussy, so the consistency is important.
Because the home has huge spans of floor-toceiling windows and double doors, brick became the background, rather than an accent, for the furnishings inside, he said.
The Rigdons’ early wish list was more conceptual: They wanted a home that was midcentury-modern inspired, though not midcentury in size. They’d lived in Marseille for a few years and wanted their Houston bedrooms to feel like their old apartment in France. And Julia knew she wanted a bold green La Cornue range as the centerpiece of their kitchen.
A white stucco exterior was the original plan, but when Julia saw a brick home she liked, they switched gears. Matthew works in shipping, so steel also became a material to use. It’s found at the front door, where curved panels frame the tall front door, and in the kitchen, where stainless counters line the perimeter of the room.
The main expanse of the home starts with a living room, then shifts to dining room, family room and then the kitchen. Original midcentury-modern furniture fills most of the space, much bought on 1stdibs.com or from dealers of vintage décor, with a good deal of help from Kyle.
“When I saw his house, we said, ‘Dillon, you can just design our house’s interiors. We’re already paying you for your time, just keep charging us,” Matthew said. “He and I like a lot of the same things, and there were a lot of things I just wanted to steal out of his house. We sat at our old dining room table one day for hours looking online.”
Kyle said his goal was for a home that looked collected over time rather than bought in a massive shopping spree.
“We had a nice time, but it wasn’t supposed to be overly polished or overly complete. There’s an open-endedness to it,” Kyle said of the finished look. “When everything is brand-new it looks too unified. When it’s not new, they have their own distinct presence that disappears into the whole.”
He especially likes the big, round, concave mirror above the fireplace. He and Julia are admirers of Anish Kapoor’s “Sky Mirror” sculpture, so they hired a metal worker to create one like it.
A stunning Milo Baughman circular sofa dominates the living room alongside vintage Hans Wegner chairs that still have their original moss-green upholstery. Two custom-made chandeliers hang over an Edward Wormley dining table with vintage chairs and a burled wood buffet.
Modern art greets you in the foyer and fills the sections of brick walls throughout the home. Much is from local artists, such as Paul Fleming, Joe Mancuso and Gavin Perry at the Barbara Davis Gallery.
Only the family room has more contemporary furnishings, a Roche Bobois Mah Jong sectional sofa in lively Missoni prints atop a bright fuchsia rug.
The family’s bedrooms anchor the other end of the home, all with vaulted ceilings and soft colors reminiscent of a French palette.
Much of the home is devoted to play space for the Rigdon children and their friends. Their scooters have the run of the home, and there’s plenty to do in the rumpus room if they get tired of their own bedrooms.
There’s a pool in the backyard, and their parents have strung up a kid-size zipline on the side of the house.
But there’s adult play, too. Julia and Matthew host friends in small and large groups for parties that often lead to afterparties.
“We’re going to be hosting 45 people for a PTA event and about 25 of them will stay later. We’ll see what happens. We have a crowd that likes to party, dancing on the countertops and stuff like that,” Matthew said, smiling. “It’s happened many a time in the two years we’ve been here.”