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Photography by Joe Bayer
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a modern bathroom with a distinctive blue-hued bathtub
Not just anyone could live here. Henry Thoreau would have loved it; anyone with a penchant for collecting wouldn't. Ever.
But then again, they would never have hired Thomas MontAlto—an architect whose favorite word is "edit"—to design their home.
"I'm right up front about that," MontAlto says. "If you want to live in a minimalist modern sculpture and have that lifestyle, that cleanliness and that openness, that is great. You just have to get rid of half of your stuff."
That's exactly what Glenn and Michelle (who requested that their last name not be used) did. Now Glenn's stash of mementos consists of one metal globe he has owned since he was four and his first acoustic guitar.
"It's an interesting lifestyle choice," Glenn says. "You have a commitment to not having very much stuff. That is something you have to think about."
Glenn and Michelle opted to let the architect create art, which is the same approach they take to collecting art: They contact an up-and-coming artist they like and commission a work. Five years ago, when they moved to St. Louis from Rochester, N.Y., and decided to build a house, one of those artists, sculptor Marte Cellura, recommended his buddy MontAlto, who flew up from his home in Cleveland to meet Glenn and Michelle.
"We sat down with him and after about 90 seconds we're going, 'Unbelievable. This is fantastic,'" Glenn says. They logged 100 hours on the phone, sent a zillion e-mails and MontAlto observed. "He practically lived with us for about three months in Rochester," Glenn says.
It's the MontAlto way. "It is the biggest expense they'll ever have," he says. "You have to treat that charge with great care. I can't assume what my clients are thinking. I need them to tell me. I need to look in their eyes and see that they understand, because we are spending a great deal of their money."
Together they sketched out the basic design of the house: three boxes--the main living area, a wing for the couple's two teenagers (with a guest room below), and a connecting box. "They are a really close-knit family," MontAlto says, "and they didn't want a lot of interior separations. At the same time, the kids have their own identity. So the kids are in one wing and the main wing is on the other side of the house, but there isn't any big separation other than distance. There aren't any doors."
The house is built of steel, glass and stucco, all set on a 10-foot grid. (The main house is 50 feet deep; the kids' wing is 30-by-30 feet.) To get a building that's an art form, Glenn says it's all in the architect--who's a master of materials.
"To get everything to happen without creating too much visual noise, it has to look simple," he continues. "And that takes a lot of work and eats money like mad. You get it back in some respects. This is a steel frame building. The fundamentals of a steel frame building are exceptionally economical. If your architect is using his head and knows all the materials, you will get a lot of all that money you pour into the architect back, because he can make really smart choices."
Glenn estimated he spent 10 percent of the cost of his home on the architect. "If it is going to be an original minimalist house, you are going to have to throw down the money," he says.
They started building in 2003, but before long, they had to change contractors. They hired C. Rallo, a company that specializes in commercial construction. "I've been doing this my whole life," MontAlto says. "They are the best I've seen."
The exterior of the house MontAlto conceived and Rallo created faces the driveway and is a wall with several black stripes, which are actually skylights. Once you open the front door, you face the forest and look over a courtyard, the site of the swimming pool.
MontAlto loves that point-counterpoint.
"The transparency and the opacity and the way those two reside together is my favorite thing about the house," MontAlto says. "From the front, it is a study in very linear layered planes and levels of opacity and shadow. As soon as you walk in the front door, it's all about the view and the glass. So you get this great oppositional counterpoint: the privacy of the entry and the way the house is inside it. You're living in a bay window."
You enter on the second floor of the three-floor main living box. The eye shoots to the kitchen, in the middle of the room, highlighted by a bright blue band of light hanging above a bar.
"The kitchen is almost like a building within a building, like a pavilion slid into the white box," MontAlto says. "The kitchen is the center of the home, where everybody hangs out. At the same time, you are looking out at the dramatic sky and the blue of the pool so we wanted to bring that blueness into the heart of the home. Since the house is all white, the blue was the big splash of color that animated the interiors."
The cabinetry in the kitchen is acrylic, glass and wood, designed by MontAlto and built by Mitchell Plastics, a company that specializes in operating rooms. They created the millwork throughout the house, as well as the blue light over the bar and acrylic shelving units, all designed by the architect.
"The acrylic millwork is a proprietary thing that we're going to start marketing," MontAlto says. "Nobody else is doing that."
The bar is curved slightly, as are the light above and the line in the concrete below (reflected also in the swoop of the driveway and retaining wall outside).
"The curve is the element of softness that animates the heart of the interior," MontAlto says. "It's a very sharp, rectilinear, crisp piece of modern architecture, and at the heart is the curving, wonderful blue thing and that's where they live."
Above the kitchen is the master bedroom. Below: the laundry room, complete with a custom-designed cat box that looks like a bench and has a secret door that opens into the garage for easy cleaning.
Across from the kitchen is the living area with plasma TV and fireplace. Beyond the living area is Glenn's office, which contains a hanging desk made of acrylic. All the wiring is hidden in the four poles suspending the desk from the ceiling. "Hidden" is another MontAlto byword. The electrical outlets were planned before the concrete floors were poured; the only air return is on top of a wall in the dining room.
"I am an absolute fanatic about everything being out of view," MontAlto says. "Wires and ducts and high-tech accessories are a bane of modern life. They really are. We spend a lot of time figuring out how to hide them. For example, a lot of the wires are hidden in the acrylic millwork.
"We are trying to build art," he adds. "Our art is about a certain cleanness and crispness and 'unclutteredness.' You can't do that if you have all sorts of wires and ducts lying around."
Everywhere possible, MontAlto sneaks in unobtrusive storage. If it looks like a support column, it probably holds four drawers. "I put cubbies all over the place," he says.
Not only is everything hidden, it's off the floor as well. Sinks (and desks) float. "That is something I have evolved in my work over time," MontAlto says. "It is my interpretation of minimalist. The fewer things that can touch the floor, the more open and minimal things look."
Of course, all the art of the building would have been for naught if the couple hadn't found the right lot and right trustee to let them proceed.
"When we first came here, the trustee said 'What is a white box going to do out in the forest?'" Glenn recalls. "Then I met with him and I said, 'What would be perfect is a beautiful white box in the forest.' He said, 'I think you're right.'"
He is.
But not just anybody could live there.
