Posted by David Hamilton on February 3rd, 2010

In belated honor of  J.D. Salinger,  a deceptively simple observation on homes, by Joyce Maynard:

“A good home must be made, not bought.”

Taken a bit out of context, this assertion is, when you think about it, pretty radical.  We buy homes, like we buy cars and home theater systems, though usually with a bigger loan, and always with more of both fear and hope.  We imagine the lives we will live there, and weigh the impact of bedrooms, half-bathrooms, views and porches, neighborhood schools, even trees and neighbors not likely to last as long as our occupancy.  We renovate, but relatively few of us ever have the chance to make a home for ourselves.  Statistically, even those Americans with net worth greater than ten million dollars, even people for whom “custom-made” is customary, only rarely build themselves a home.

Having built my own home (without benefit of net worth), I’ve always found this statistic a little sad.  For me, making a home was an exercise in understanding myself and my wife, the way we work, live and sleep, an enumeration of what we hold dear, and of what we can do without,  almost a plan for the people we wanted to be.  We stood on a ladder on our homesite, to figure out the view from our “bedroom,” and imagined our children, not yet born, and where their swingset might be.  For a couple who’d previously imagined life in terms of the next academic degree, or the next six months at work, the creation of something permanent and personal was a rare opportunity for introspection.

My work at Bundoran Farm has given me  a front row seat as the first residents of this community have thought, re-thought, and ultimately committed to building the home of their dreams.  The first two new homes have now been occupied for about six months, and the difference between them couldn’t be more obvious.  One home, nestled into a forest preserve, is half the size of the other, which peeks over the shoulder of its pasture site to a 270 degree view of rolling farmland.  If you met these two couples at a party, you’d never guess that their visions might diverge so dramatically.  Of course, the magic of this process is that each of these two homes looks as if it were meant to be there, and the owners seem at home in a way that suggests many years’ connection to their land.

A second building boom is currently underway, with at least three homes being designed, and another pair of homes under construction.  Again, these two owners would look pretty similar on paper: accomplished professionals with a seemingly limitless affection for nature, and once again, their visions of home couldn’t be more different.  I’ve attached some images below of these two homes, both on Hightop Drive, to illustrate what we at Bundoran Farm find so fascinating.  The first home, on Maple Hill, is a charming, clean-lined and well-sited (check out the view from the front door) farmhouse being built by Abrahamse + Co., and the second, “Woodhill,” being built by Artisan Construction, is a smaller, highly sustainable home perched on a hillside amidst Bundoran Farm’s most impressive poplar forest (look closely, these trees are giants).

As with so many other elements of life, the endpoint of building appears to be subordinate to the depth and quality of this process of consideration, discovery, design and execution.  Both the homes underway are already obvious successes for their owners, and for the community: at once respectful, sustainable and exciting.   It’s hard to express the gratitude we feel, as stewards of this land, toward the owners, designers and master builders who have taken the vision of Bundoran Farm and extended it into the incredibly personal and unpredictable world of home-making.

Filed under: Architecture and Design, Baldwin Center for Preservation, Education and Inspiration, General, Green Building, Project Updates