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Photography by Dilip Vishwanat
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Phil Durahm St. Louis architect of the year
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Phil Durham interior space
In the first At Home Architect of the Year contest, the entries were varied and impressive. But just one walked off with all the honors.
Architects are like actors—complete one job and audition for another; make each vision your own and turn it into a reality that both enthralls and excites. It's the "art" in architecture that makes the great architect a star, not just one of the cast.
For our first award competition, we asked for entries in two categories: new construction and renovation of an existing structure. The contestants ranged from small shops to large firms; the projects from minor add-ons to brand new large houses. The work was impressive, but Phil Durham of Studio|Durham stood out from the rest. He won for the construction of a new house in Ladue, as well as the renovation of an old factory into his own office and home.
The son of a minister, Durham was born in Rhode Island and grew up in New York. He came to St. Louis in 1979 to attend Washington U. and never left. His first job in architecture was working for the behemoth Hellmuth, Obata + Kassabaum on large commercial projects. "In my six-and-a-half years, I had seven bosses," Durham says. "My last one and I didn't get along, to put it mildly." So he formed Studio|Durham. At first, Durham ran the firm with fellow architect Elva Rubio; since 2000, he's been on his own, with a staff of six.
Calling himself "the last of the Mohicans," Durham still draws his plans by hand. "The idea of staring into a computer all day is not my idea of how to work."
Studio|Durham has a mix of clients, but Durham's ideal is one who wants something interesting, who challenges the architect but who adds limitations. And when the architect meets the challenge with designs that are both bold and livable, he's pronounced At Home's Architect of the Year.
Thoroughly Modern Durham
A sloped site, bad dirt and strict municipal guidelines ... despite the greatest of challenges, Phil Durham still managed to design one couple's dream house
By Stefene Russell
Photography by Alise O'Brien
A few years ago, Jay and Denise Levitch inherited a house in Ladue. What sounded like a good deal on paper was, in reality, a headache incarnate. The house was in iffy shape; its sloping lot was diagonally intersected by a dry stream bed, which was used for drainage. That odd topography meant one next-door neighbor's house was built at street level while the other was back towards the rear of the lot.
They never regretted wrecking the first house, but the couple did lose sleep over hiring an architect to design the new one. They wanted a genuine Modernist abode, the kind you see shining from the pages of Dwell magazine. But finding someone willing to design a beautiful contemporary house on a skiwampus lot—rather than just recommending a traditional house propped up with a retaining wall—was tough.
"He was the only person who was willing, or could do what we wanted to do," Denise Levitch says of Phil Durham (who has in fact appeared in the pages of Dwell for his brilliant reworking of a pair of Quonset huts in Belleville). "I gave him some pictures from Architectural Digest. The openness was really important, the high ceilings. He interpreted his design from the pictures, and pretty much came up with exactly what we wanted."
When asked how difficult it is to design a house from a folder full of magazine pages, Durham laughs and shrugs: "Well, that really depends on the client." In other words, things are never that easy—even with demolition, much less construction.
"Tearing down the old house took a lot longer that we'd hoped," he says. "We found bad soil under the house, which is why it was in such bad shape, so we had some remediation to do, so we started a little bit late."
"But it turned out okay—it always turns out okay," Denise counters good-naturedly.
Luckily, razing the old house was the only unpleasant part of the operation. Durham was excited about the prospect of designing an unabashedly Modernist house (as opposed to the Etch-A-Sketch contemporary buildings that sometimes get labeled as such) and describes the Levitches as "the perfect clients--they knew exactly what they wanted." Denise says she thinks "everyone should have Phil design their house."
"I wanted walls that would make it like a gallery, so we could show off our art," Denise explains. She and her husband also wanted wooden barrel-vaulted ceilings, as well as lots of space and light.
So adjoining the graceful, curved ceilings on the main floor are windows that run the length of the house, like glass walls. Both floors have them, giving the house an almost dollhouse-like openness, though a lushly planted backyard and a privacy wall prevent it from feeling too exposed. "You feel like you're outside, almost," Denise says. "The dogs like it. They can watch everything that's going on. They get a fabulous show."
To deflect heat, the windows are treated with Low-E solar control glaze, topped with an additional coat of Solarban.
"And hopefully," Durham adds, "all the trees we had to cut down that we didn't want to will grow in and protect it a little more." In the meantime, the windows are equipped with white fabric power blinds.
The inside-outside feel is further enhanced by the fact that some of the walls extend right past the panes. "This is the main exterior stucco," Durham says, pointing out a living room wall made from panels. Set into the wall is an offcenter fireplace with an L-shaped mantel that runs all the way to the edge of the wall, past the firebox.
"It's black granite," he says, patting the mantel. "It's actually three pieces mitered together into a box. It looks solid, but it's not ... and I'd hate to think what it would weigh if it was."
Durham and the Levitches also agreed on materials, including simple stainless steel for the kitchen countertops. ("My husband likes to cook," Denise says, "so it was important that we had something state-of-the-art.")
"We went through a whole bunch of material samples with the contractor," Durham says. "And then we did mock-ups of the ceiling and the trim--so we had big toys to play with before we started building."
The only thing he admits to being slightly disappointed with is the downstairs floor, which is poured concrete topped with a finish and sealer.
"Things happen," he says. "We ended up with a lot more character than we'd originally planned on." (Denise disagrees with him, interjecting, "I like it.")
However, Durham is genuinely pleased about the closets on both floors, which hide what will eventually become an elevator—perhaps because this implies the Levitches' long-term commitment to the house. Knowing that they're in the house for the long haul has given the couple the luxury of settling into the house at their own pace, bit by bit. It's been about a year since they've moved in, but they're still fine-tuning things, learning how to keep the water in the backyard fountain clear and adding bamboo plants in giant planters on the deck just outside the master bedroom.
"It's been a very slow inaugural cruise here, hasn't it?" Durham says.
"Yeah," Denise replies. "I guess it's like—well, we don't have any children, but I guess it's like the process of having a baby."
"But with a house," Durham quips, "no stretch marks."
Off the Presses
For years, Phil Durham longed to own an old ironstone cookware-factory-turned-printing-press warehouse in Soulard. Now he does.
By Christy Marshall
Photography by Alise O'Brien
Phil Durham was heading off on vacation to Cancun with Hali Blumenthal. Once there, he planned to propose marriage. But just as he was about to leave, he got a call informing him that if he wanted to buy a circa-1840 building on Menard, he had to move. Fast.
"I proposed to her on our first night there because it was her birthday," Durham recalls. "Then we spent the whole trip negotiating the [real-estate] deal."
A longtime city dweller, Durham had lusted after the building for years but it was never for sale. "It was quasi-inhabited by this crazy old guy who lived off the grid," Durham says. "He bought old printing presses and stripped them for parts, which he sold all over the country. But he didn't have electric, water or gas." In the late 1980s, an executive with Ross Construction bought the building to protect another neighboring property his company owned. Durham tracked down the name of the owner in the city's property database and wrote a letter asking to buy the building. But being owner was a dubious distinction.
"The building was in really bad shape," Durham recalls. "I wouldn't have let one of my clients renovate it ... All I had when I bought the building was brick and a relatively watertight roof."
The challenge was to turn the structure into both home and workplace for $75 per square foot, including the $140,000 price of the property. Unheard of. Unthinkable. But for Durham, doable.
"I had some advantages," he says. "I had free architectural services and I was able to call in many favors. I was the general contractor; I did all the finishing work myself. Hali and I did the painting, finished the woodwork and the miscellaneous labor all through the project."
On the first floor, there were no walls, so there was nothing to tear out. "There was one stair and an old elevator," Durham says. "It was nothing except junk."
The walls were "racked" or wavy, so Durham had to build two sheer walls to stiffen them side-to-side. While he usually focuses on exposing the building's woodwork, he didn't have that option here. There had been a fire years earlier and all that was left were damaged floors and walls of brick. "I ended up having to do drywall ceilings and things. The only thing we really got to expose was the brick and the heavy timber structure."
Outside, Durham cleared out the courtyard. Per the dictum of the city's historic preservationists, he put windows in the brick so it looks like there are rooms on the second floor. There aren't.
"They didn't mind me taking the roof away or this modern facade, but they had to have the windows put in," Durham explains. "So I have a bunch of windows with open air on either side. It cost us 20 grand—these historic replacement windows are expensive."
The front is constructed out of planks of cunaru, a tropical hardwood similar to epee. The wood is on a vented cavity system that opens to the wall. "It really holds solar gain off the building," Durham says, "and makes it more efficient."
Pine steps lead upstairs to the living space, basically a large loft room with kitchen-dining room-living room-bedroom in one continuum. A wood stove rotates and can be seen in the bedroom as well as the living room. A second bedroom, filled with furniture built by Hali's grandfather, is off to the side, as is the master bath and dressing area. Aside from Mr. and Mrs. Durham, Tallulah, their large dog, inhabits the house. In the middle of the living room is the building's original elevator. "It has been incredibly useful," Durham says. "It still works. It's counterweighted—it raises you and you have to pull yourself down."
The kitchen features cabinets with straight-grain fir veneers built by Stephen Souder, as well as a nifty organizational system by Driad. There are no upper cabinets (Durham doesn't believe in them), but there is a sizeable pullout pantry.
"Cooking is what I love, so we got the 36-inch Viking stove," he says. "Hali likes to bake, which is not something I like." The backsplash and countertop are stainless "because you get such a great deal with stainless and I love having the one surface." Most of the furniture not made by Hali's grandfather came from Centro.
On the first floor, behind the architectural firm offices, is a private parking spot and separate workout space for Hali. When they were pouring the new concrete floors, they discovered kilns from long ago.
Since purchasing the old ironstone factory, Durham has bought more—the building next door and another neighboring building that is being converted into condos. An obvious supporter of city living, Durham chafes at the term and notion of New Urbanism.
"It sort of drives me fruity just because it rationalizes the same old developer crap, from what I can tell," Durham says. "They wrap it all in these high-sounding things about making people come to green areas, but they are still plowing down cornfields into developments.
"But if it makes people stop and think that maybe they should live in a community where they could walk to the store or a restaurant; and then if they make the logical leap to say, 'There is a whole city out there with places like that,' at least [the New Urbanists] are making an important contribution to the dialogue. So there is a limit to how upset you can get with them."
