Fabulous Fusion

 

In a Williamstown, Massachusetts, home designed by architects F. Andrus Burr and Ann McCallum, design influences hail from many corners of the globe: traditional English barns, International Modernist architecture, and Japanese courtyards—and they all come together in perfect harmony. Sited on a hill with a spectacular mountain view, the house is an ideal setting for the eclectic collection of art and objects assembled by its well-traveled owners.

 

The couple, who spent many years as expatriates and now have international careers, bought the property in 2005, and worked closely with the architects throughout the two-year design and construction process. The goal was to build a “modern house with a sense of warmth about it.” The home’s most striking Modernist elements are the sixteen-foot-tall windows dominating its great room on three sides: double-glazed panes look out over a view that resembles a vast, ever-changing landscape painting. The abundance of glass lets in a panorama of three states—Vermont’s Green Mountains to the north, New York’s Taconic range to the west, and Mount Greylock to the east. Two working farms spread out to the northwest, marked by a tall silo.

 

In keeping with its surroundings, the house pays homage to the traditional English barn architecture that became a New England touchstone—designs that typically cluster several smaller buildings for greater efficiency and warmth. Clad in low-maintenance corrugated steel siding that mimics wooden clapboards, the house is laid out in an asymmetrical U-shape, with a great room at the center of a series of connected “sheds” (with slanted roofs) and “barns” (with peaked roofs). The wing extending southwest from the great room contains the master suite, while the longer southeast wing holds the kitchen, mudroom, laundry, pantry, home office, and garage on the first floor, with guest space above. Designed with the couple’s three grown children and future grandchildren in mind, guest quarters encompass three bedrooms, two baths, and a small sitting room. Soft whites and greens on the walls bring “a sense of the outdoors into the space, and give a neutral backdrop for all those brightly colored pieces of art,” says interior designer Aidan Cassidy, who helped choose paint colors, fabrics, and furnishings.

 

“The kitchen is traditional, but it blends with the modernity of the house,” Cassidy says. “The root of it is certainly an old English style with a more furniture-like approach and elements like the hutch, painted cabinetry, and seating area.”

 

The built-in hutch, modeled on an English antique and painted gray-blue, holds a bar, mini-fridge, and shelves displaying decorative plates. A long center island with a countertop of durable, honed granite contains a small sink and serves as both worktable and breakfast bar. The Wolf range, Miele dishwasher, and Sub-Zero refrigerator are all stainless steel, creating a crisp modern look that’s mellowed by wooden sculpture and global folk art from the couple’s collection, including landscape watercolors from rural France. In the sitting area, a wooden table faces comfy armchairs and a grouping of box frames holding souvenir matchbooks from the couple’s travels.

 

The layout “allows you to separate the master bedroom very nicely from all the rest of the action—the guests get their own separate building and everybody comes together in the big ’barn’ space,” Burr explains. In addition, the unusual footprint creates “outdoor spaces that are not only useful and protected, but also nice spaces to be in. We wanted to give them the possibility of entertaining outside on warm days, having the party spill out on either side of the house.”

 

Snuggled into the outdoor triangle between the great room and the southwest wing, a paved eating area and a “sun-catcher room,” are sheltered by partial walls and sliding, barn-style wooden doors that can be closed when west winds blow. Here, against the pale siding, the massive stone chimney of the great room fireplace makes a strong visual statement. The consistency of materials and the flow between inside and outside spaces, Burr notes, is a design feature originally imported from Japan by European architects. These, along with the open floor plan, oversized glass windows, and emphasis on the use of outdoor space, became hallmarks of International Modernist architecture.

 

On the home’s south side, a long driveway terminates in a formal courtyard. McCallum visited Japan before designing this house, and it’s clear how the country’s spare elegance informs its outdoor space. A bluestone path, laid out in traditional Japanese manner, diverges to the front and side doors. A sculptural vessel known as a Luna pot occupies the grass rectangle next to the path, its beautifully mottled surface resembling wood-fired Oriental pottery. Five crabapple trees planted in an L-shape—to parallel the walkway as well as the stone wall at the front of the courtyard—blossom in the spring and bear bright-red berries in winter.

 

From this courtyard, the front door opens into a low-ceilinged hallway, separated from the great room by two tall cupboards connected by a low wall, drawing the eye immediately to the vast north-facing windows that frame sky and mountains. Above the hallway floats a balcony where a den and office are tucked neatly beneath a skylight. The staircase to the balcony is edged with industrial-grade railings of thin black steel, creating an effect often used by Bauhaus architects. “They really liked this idea of a railing, often with overhanging cantilevered floors, that looked like the bridge of a ship, where a captain would be,” Burr explains.

 

Despite the grand scale of the landscape outside and the sixteen-foot ceilings within, the great room feels homey. Translucent shades may be lowered over the huge windows to diffuse light on sunny afternoons or retain heat on gray days. Here, and elsewhere in the house, floors are made of burnished walnut. Radiant under-floor heat, supplemented by forced air, spells comfort even on bitterly cold days, while vibrant paintings splash kinetic color on the walls. Rather than a cathedral ceiling—which might have been overwhelming—the architects chose a flat tongue-and-groove board ceiling painted white to make the space feel more intimate. At one end of the room, a massive stone fireplace made of granite from the Chester Granite Company offers additional seating on its raised hearth. Opposite the fireplace, a nine-foot dining table, handmade from two wide planks of yellow birch, parallels east-facing windows. Flanking the north windows are floor-to-ceiling bookshelves with attached ladders, which hold the couple’s extensive library and some of their many objets d’art—including a Mexican folk-art shaman and a row of hats from the former Soviet Union, one constructed of folded newspaper. “We wanted to build a house that reflected who we are, not who we wanted to become,” says the man of the house. “The books and art and knickknacks are part of our cumulative experience living in Paris, New Mexico, Vermont, and now Williamstown.”

 

He and his wife manage an international scholarship program established by a major philanthropic organization, and they do independent consulting, which involves contact with scholars and college presidents around the world. After living elsewhere over the past three decades, they set down roots near Williams College, his alma mater and one of the ninety-one American educational institutions that partner with the scholarship program.

 

While the house integrates features from around the globe, it’s the New England elements—the weather that blows in from the west—that have perhaps the greatest influence on life here. “One of the things that’s really a joy in this house is to be able to enjoy the skyscapes as much as the landscapes, and, because of the size of the windows, we can really enjoy the sky’s relation to the landscape,” the homeowner says. “We feel very comfortable here, with the ideas and artifacts of our international careers in a fresh new framework.” [SEPTEMBER 2009]

A contributing editor to Berkshire Living, Tresca Weinstein lives and writes in Canaan, N.Y.

 

THE GOODS

Burr and McCallum Architects
720 Main St.
Williamstown, Mass.

www.burrandmccallum.com

Cassidy & Teti Interiors
7 East 20th St. #6R
New York, N.Y.

www.cassidyteti.com

Countryside Landscape, Gerard St. Hilaire
677 Simonds Rd.
Williamstown, Mass.

Custom Window Treatments
88 North St.
Pittsfield, Mass.

Hayward Gardens
508 McKinnon Rd.
Putney, Vt.

www.haywardgardens.com

Bart van Luling, chimney stonemason
Williamstown, Mass.

Vermont Roofing Company
Harwood Hill
Bennington, Vt.

www.vermontroofing.com