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Sally Wolfe enlisted the help of her interior designer in the selection of paint colors and rug choices to add warmth to her modern home.
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Contemporary architects like Guernsey are devoted to bridging the indoors and outdoors, and giving homeowners spacious living environments that are functional, but edgy.
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Architect Roger Guernsey created a spacious wardroom complete with panoramic windows and stunning ambiance.
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The screened porch was designed to capture the great panoramic view on the property.
Williamsburg is unlikely to strike you as the hub of modern or contemporary homes or architecture. And it isn’t. While modern houses exist, the communities here tend to adhere to colonial-style standards made popular in 19th century America—symmetrical squares or rectangles, two-story living featuring a staircase as a central, dominant design element and a centrally-placed front door.
As homeowners purchase existing inventory, they also desire departure from the old by adding contemporary personality to their homes. It’s not uncommon to hire an architect to create modern-day living spaces within colonial-style houses.
Roger Guernsey is one such architect. He’s called by clients looking to emphasize open space as a visual element while using new, energy-efficient technology and materials. He said while people can choose to work first with a builder, architects look for specifics that builders instinctively don’t.
Good architectural design, according to Guernsey, is about creating spaces that interact and respond to the environment.
“Planning begins with the site,” said Guernsey, who considers views from the windows to the position of the sun in the sky at various points of the year in his planning. “The house takes on shape based on where the best views are.”
One client in First Colony hired Guernsey to upgrade their colonial into a net-zero home. This style of house focuses on producing as much or more renewable energy as it consumes by harnessing solar power. Most tenants are left with no energy bills to pay and often enter energy shares with their local electric company.
“My job was to give them a house that wasn’t a spaceship,” laughed Guernsey. “A house that would still fit in the neighborhood. Something ordinary that was doing its job for solar and fulfilling their desire for a simple house.”
How Architects & Builders Collaborate
When architects and builders come together in a traditional manner, the architect comes up with the design and the builder builds it. In Williamsburg, the focus for new homeowners is on modernizing of existing homes.
Page Bishop, a realtor with Liz Moore & Associates, says colonial houses aren’t resonating with millennials and professionals. They prefer the houses to feel modern when they walk through the front door.
“They’re not into the ornate, antique looks. They want to the sleek, modernist minimal design,” she said, adding that homeowners who have contemporary homes have an advantage in the market place.
“Many people aren’t looking [to build] modern homes here,” says Guernsey, which is why renovating has become the focus of his work.
That’s how he met Dale Trowbridge of D. Trowbridge &Associates, a local contractor on a collaboration in Kingsmill few years ago. “The customer hired Roger [Guernsey]for design and I did a part project for them. We started collaborating from there,” recalled Trowbridge.
The pair recently completed a modernization project for Sally Wolfe, who lives in The Coves. She contacted Guernsey to create closet in her bedroom. What she got is a spacious wardroom complete with panoramic windows and stunning ambiance. Below the space, a screened porch overlooking her private wooded lot and creek.
According to Wolfe, the idea for the closet and porch came about on a drive through town with her husband, Ken.
“We were driving around Williamsburg near the college and there was a cute New England-style cottage. As we looked at the house, when we got to the screened porchKen said, ‘You know what, we could add a screened porch downstairs with a closet over top,’” recalled Wolfe.
The couple went back and forth and decided to enlist Guernsey’s creativity.
“They had a really great panoramic view and I wanted to emphasize the view by breaking it into panels,” said Guernsey. “I said ‘Let’s do this screened porch differently so that when you’re inside, you really sense something all the way around.”
Trowbridge called the project fun.
“It was a little more challenging with the amount and type of steel and with the first floor’s screened porch angles, but it was a fun job,” he said.
Wolfe, who said her aim was to make her home feel like an art gallery, said that while she gravitates toward the clean lines of modern designs, “It's crisp. There are no extraneous details or extra pieces, so everything has to be thought through and done just right. It really permits the art to shine, when everything else is dialed down. And I find that soothing,” she said.
The dangers of modern, she added, are ending up with a home that’s impersonal and industrial feeling.
“You can get really cold with modern, and that’s where Roger and my interior designer helped most. She’s helped us with paint colors and rug choices to make sure we don’t get too far into stark and cold. We want to keep it warm,” Wolfe said.
Ready to Go Modern?
For those considering modernizing, contemporary architects like Guernsey are devoted to bridging the indoors and outdoors, and giving homeowners spacious living environments that are functional, but edgy. And now with people seeking to be more environmentally conscious and energy efficient, sustainable materials, use of lighting, choice of flooring and solarization options allow for fun, innovative magazine-worthy design.
“As an architect, I get to use my creativity to solve a need,” said Guernsey whose design has been featured in Better Homes & Gardens, “which is better for my clients than applying an off-the-shelf template.”
Chris Jones is a fan of contemporary design. A lover of all things HGTV, he once hung out with and interviewed Sabrina Soto.
Architect - Roger Guernsey · rogerguernsey@gmail.com
Builder - Dale Trowbridge · daletrow@gmail.com
Flooring - Chelsea Crone · chelsea3238@gmail.com
Realtor - Page Bishop • lizmoore.com/agents/pagebishop