Green Hills Residence

We first worked with the clients on a retail store downtown, and they later asked if we would help with their own home. They are warm and inviting people who have built a strong community in their Nashville neighborhood, so when a homesite went up for sale on their street, they couldn't resist making a home in the place they already call home. In our first meetings they told us about spaces that had felt like home, her grandmother's dressing room, where the ladies could be themselves, and a cabin in the wilderness by the water. He would spend all of his time on a porch if he could, and she would spend hers in the kitchen, but entertaining was what they shared, a way to bring people in and share life with others.

The land is an ordinary infill lot in Green Hills, long and narrow, with neighboring homes crowding in on both sides. Two large poplars stood at the front of the site, and we wanted to save them. The rest was a blank slate.

They wanted to live outdoors, a challenge on such a narrow lot. We knew we would need to thin out the building and let the outside trickle in. The kitchen was the heart of the home they were longing for, the place they spend all of their time, so every room had to reach the yards and flow easily into the next, all centered on the kitchen.

We placed the kitchen at the center and offset four wings from it in a pinwheel. The porte cochere and garage face the street, the living and dining rooms open to either side, and the primary suite sits in the rear wing. A skylight above the kitchen turns it into a light well, drawing daylight into the middle of the house. The pinwheel lets every room step directly out to the grounds around it. Wherever you are, a window draws you back toward the yard, the garden seen from the home and the home from the garden.