Aclear point of view

An architect and his wife, soon-to-be empty nesters, prove that a smaller home can be light, bright, tight and just right.

Architects, says Steve Newman, are notoriously bad at designing houses for themselves.

So to envision his award-winning Lakewood home, Steve Newman shifted his thinking. He would make a house for a client: his wife, Kathy.

“She told me very clearly that she wanted something warm and homelike,” he said. “She was a good client.”

The Orchard House, as the couple came to call it, will be one of the featured homes on the DenverModern Home Tour on Oct. 12-13.

It’s neither a soaring, cold contemporary residence nor a funkymidcentury abode. Instead, it’s three small structures linked bywalkways, hallways and views on an intricately landscaped 1acre lot that had once been the orchard for a Catholic nuns’ retirement home.

Maybe it’s most notable for what it’s not: Sprawling. Grandiose. Formal

“We had three goals,” he said. “We wanted to do passive solar; we wanted to be smart about energy savings; and we wanted a smaller house.”

With two sons and a daughter in high school, the Newmans could see that they’d soon be empty nesters. It would be the first home Steve had built for the family from the ground up; as principal of the former Newman Cavender & Doane, his main gig was commercial design, including downtown’s Denver Post building. He sold the company to DLR Group in 2007, then stayed on for four years before striking out on his own again with Newman Architecture.

He drewon many influences for the

At top, a double deck of south-facing glass fills Steve and Kathy Newman’s Lakewood main living area with light. Above, Kathy wreathed the home in small garden rooms shaded by apple trees. Photos by Cyrus McCrimmon, The Denver Post