The design for this pair of modern green homes was donated to the Athens Land Trust, a local non-profit promoting land conservation and affordable housing. Both homes are Earthcraft certified for sustainable building through Southface Institute in Atlanta.
The homes are 1,500 square feet with an additional 300 square feet of finished basement storage. The houses were designed with a shallow depth and long frontage to minimize the grade change from front to back and create a form in keeping with the typology of the 1950’s brick ranches prevalent in the neighborhood. The sites are blocks away from one another and both have steep terrain falling away from street level. The sites were leveraged by designing finished spaces into the walk-out basement. The houses are efficiently designed with stacked plumbing, a simple mechanical run, and rectangular building envelope. The exterior is given some relief and the foundation area is minimized by incorporating slight cantilevers on three sides of the house. The shed roof directs water away from the front of the house and accommodates a vaulted ceiling over the open living space with clerestory windows facing the street. The cantilevered cedar rainscreen volume housing the kitchen adds visual warmth and a more modern horizontal line to the front of the house.
