Creating a Homestead in the Heart of New Jersey
March 31, 2020
This 12-part blog series will share the vision, architectural challenges, and construction effort involved in building a new house, one that defies conventional home design by integrating the environment in a rigorous, unprecedented and beneficial way.
By Bill Kaufman, Founder & CEO of WESKetch Architecture + Construction | February 28, 2020
As I think back to October of last year, when I first drove down a narrow dirt road and got a glimpse of the 43-acre parcel of land that would be the site for a new home, I knew then that this project would be different.
Having been an architect for 25 years, my firm has designed and constructed many different styled homes. However, clients rarely ever challenged me to design a house that holistically integrated with the land around it. Ultimately, I was told, the project must leave the land better than it was before. “We are merely stewards of the land while we are here,” my client, Jason, said to me, and with these words, I was tasked to create a structure with permanence ever conscious of our transience on earth.
What makes this project different is that it has a very definitive North Star. In the context of project work, American entrepreneur Tim Ferriss coined the term “North Star” to mean a strategic focal point. In astronomy, the bright North Star appears at a fixed point in the sky while other constellations shift around it. In the case of this project, my firm would have to seamlessly meld the built-environment into the natural anatomy of the land. In other words, we would design and build a structure to minimize the carbon footprint of the home while improving the biodiversity and health of the terrain with time.
Designing an energy-efficient, locally-sourced “small house”
Having made the decision to sell their beautiful home in Montclair, our clients, Jason and Deborah, asked WESKetch Architecture + Construction to read and absorb a lengthy seven-page document of design goals. Afterward, my team set about designing a small house. The small house concept, as outlined by Jay Schafer in “The Small House Book,” is not necessarily physically small in appearance. A small house is built to minimize its carbon footprint. It has multi-purpose spaces and is environmentally-friendly. There is often no formal dining room, living room or spare bedrooms. Rather, the small house demands spatial versatility, multi-generational functionality, and separation of spaces. Each room is designed for usability, not for show.
Bart guards a reclaimed wood sample.
