The Villa James was designed for a young family
in eastern Georgia with an affinity for Tuscan
architecture and a love of the outdoors. It was
critical for the home to provide a constant
sense of connection to its surroundings. With
this in mind, we set out to create a comfortable
and inviting home that could be opened up to
provide direct access to fresh air and sunlight,
while accommodating occupants who enjoy
venturing outside to enjoy the beauty of their
environment from the comfort of porches, patios,
and decks.
The exterior of this custom home is
characterized by alternating archways and timber
elements that suggest an old-world flavor and
provide ambiance to an uncommonly vital outdoor
living space. Hand-crafted timber framing forms
a series of cloistered spaces that connect
independent interior spaces. The meandering
network of connective exterior space forms a
u-shaped walkway that surrounds a lower level
courtyard and garden space. Inside, a series of
timber trusses over the great room distinguish
this space from all others, celebrating it as
the heart of the home and the center of all
activity. This lofty open central space contains
various areas of disparate functionality that
enjoy a visual connection to one another and are
unified by the cadence of timber trusses
marching across the space overhead.
We refer to homes like the Villa James as timber
frame hybrid homes since they mix a timber roof
structure and structural insulated panels with
conventional stick framing and pre-engineered
trusses over a full concrete basement
foundation. The style of the Villa James is as
much a fusion of varying sensibilities as its
construction. To achieve a “Tuscan” feel in the
middle of the American South, elements evoking a
variety of traditional Italian styles were
combined with a Georgian approach to living
comfortably with the heat of long summer days.
The resulting sentiments were applied to a
spatial plan organized around a cloistered
courtyard with a view to a lake engineered and
created by the homeowner. Rustic yet refined,
it’s a plan that’s particularly well-suited to
our clients’ laid back Southern temperaments as
well as to their busy family lifestyle.
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