AIA Home of the Month: Mountain High
| By Sara daSilva |
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TOUR THIS HOME
Open House of the Month
Sunday, May 17
Noon–3 p.m.
Our ongoing partnership with the American Institute of Architects Seattle Chapter (AIA Seattle) continues our commitment to bring the experience of Puget Sound–area residential design to our readers. Each issue, we showcase an architect-designed home, selected by AIA Seattle and Northwest Home, which will be open to the public for a Sunday-afternoon viewing. We invite you to tour this issue’s featured home, designed by William Charles Shugart of Shugart Bates, located in Preston at 30500 SE 58th St., on Sunday, May 17, between noon and 3 p.m. For more information on the tour and the Open House program, please visit
nwhome.com or aiaseattle.org; 206.448.4938.
Tangle is a word that Deby Harvey uses when talking about the relationship between art, nature and life. Tangle as in deep, twining passion. Tangle as in big, glorious mess. n Call it what you will but the deeply felt connection between earth, art and existence is what great architecture is all about. It should come as no surprise, therefore, that Deby’s philosophy (minus the mess) became the mandate for an extraordinary house.
July of 2004 saw the start of a fruitful collaboration between two artists—Deby is a sculptor and landscape designer, her husband, Donn Harvey, is an engineer and jazz musician—and architect William Charles Shugart of Shugart Bates. From the outset, Shugart saw himself as an interpreter of sorts, working to translate the Harveys’ artistic instincts from poetry into stone. “The biggest challenge in working with the client was gaining an understanding of what they wanted based on the words they used,” he explains. “Being a good active listener allowed me to hear both the clients’ spoken words and their true intentions. Then we used a series of graphic exercises to transform those words into relevant forms.”
First, the trio studied their canvas, a sweep of five acres overlooking Tiger Mountain. They walked the perimeter, learned the names of the resident songbirds and traced the path of the sun. They thought about what it meant to live among mountains, and marveled at how the Cascade Range both defined and enfolded the site. Then, as artists are wont to do, they sat down and searched for a metaphor.
This metaphor, writ large, is the first thing you see as you nose up the steep driveway onto the property: a jagged, fractured roofline thrusting at angles toward the sky. In short, the house’s profile mirrors the surrounding mountains. It is audacious architecture, but it works. “It’s as if two tectonic plates crashed together and where they met, this house rose up,” explains Deby.
Open House of the Month
Sunday, May 17
Noon–3 p.m.
Our ongoing partnership with the American Institute of Architects Seattle Chapter (AIA Seattle) continues our commitment to bring the experience of Puget Sound–area residential design to our readers. Each issue, we showcase an architect-designed home, selected by AIA Seattle and Northwest Home, which will be open to the public for a Sunday-afternoon viewing. We invite you to tour this issue’s featured home, designed by William Charles Shugart of Shugart Bates, located in Preston at 30500 SE 58th St., on Sunday, May 17, between noon and 3 p.m. For more information on the tour and the Open House program, please visit
nwhome.com or aiaseattle.org; 206.448.4938.
Tangle is a word that Deby Harvey uses when talking about the relationship between art, nature and life. Tangle as in deep, twining passion. Tangle as in big, glorious mess. n Call it what you will but the deeply felt connection between earth, art and existence is what great architecture is all about. It should come as no surprise, therefore, that Deby’s philosophy (minus the mess) became the mandate for an extraordinary house.
July of 2004 saw the start of a fruitful collaboration between two artists—Deby is a sculptor and landscape designer, her husband, Donn Harvey, is an engineer and jazz musician—and architect William Charles Shugart of Shugart Bates. From the outset, Shugart saw himself as an interpreter of sorts, working to translate the Harveys’ artistic instincts from poetry into stone. “The biggest challenge in working with the client was gaining an understanding of what they wanted based on the words they used,” he explains. “Being a good active listener allowed me to hear both the clients’ spoken words and their true intentions. Then we used a series of graphic exercises to transform those words into relevant forms.”
First, the trio studied their canvas, a sweep of five acres overlooking Tiger Mountain. They walked the perimeter, learned the names of the resident songbirds and traced the path of the sun. They thought about what it meant to live among mountains, and marveled at how the Cascade Range both defined and enfolded the site. Then, as artists are wont to do, they sat down and searched for a metaphor.
This metaphor, writ large, is the first thing you see as you nose up the steep driveway onto the property: a jagged, fractured roofline thrusting at angles toward the sky. In short, the house’s profile mirrors the surrounding mountains. It is audacious architecture, but it works. “It’s as if two tectonic plates crashed together and where they met, this house rose up,” explains Deby.
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