INHABITAT: “Modern net-zero home sits in harmony with its woodland surroundings.”

 

By Nichol Jewell | Photos by Tzu Chen

Chapel Hill-based firm Arielle Condoret Schechter is known for its commitment to building sustainable homes that don’t sacrifice elegance or comfort. The company’s latest work includes the spacious Haw River House, which was built with several efficient features to create a net-zero energy home that is seamlessly linked with its natural surroundings.

Tucked into a pristine woodland overlooking the Haw River, which runs through central North Carolina, the beautiful Haw River House sits in harmony with the landscape. Using this natural setting as inspiration, the 2,600-square-foot house is outfitted with several energy-efficient features that make it completely energy-neutral. READ MORE

ARCHITECTS + ARTISANS: “A Hawk’s-Eye View from a Haw River Home”

By J. Mike Welton | Photos by Tzu Chen

For a new home on the Haw River in North Carolina’s Chatham County, architect Arielle Schechter found her inspiration in two places.

One was the river. The other was a rock.

“Walking down by the riverbank, there were so many trees cantilevered and bent out over the river, that I said: ‘I want this house to bend out over the river too,” she says.

She placed the home on the only available buildable knoll since the 21-acre site slopes steeply down to a flood plain and riparian buffer below.

As for the rock, it actually was a huge granite boulder, split down the center. “It’s super-sculptural with a thin knife-blade through the middle where rainwater flows,” she says. “The idea of bisecting something appealed to me, so I did that with the butterfly roof.”

Then there was the raptor. READ MORE

 

CHATHAM MAGAZINE: “River Retreat”

THIS COUPLE HAD A RIVERSIDE LOT WITH A DREAM VIEW AFTER FINDING A SECLUDED PIECE OF LAND THAT OVERLOOKS THE HAW RIVER

Photo by Tzu Chen

By Matt White

After selling a home in Chapel Hill in 2017, Kate Paradis and Scott Zimmerman thought about buying a vacation home…

… In 2017 the couple began working with Chapel Hill architect Arielle Condoret Schechter. Arielle’s final design produced a low-slung, light-filled, 2700-square-foot as unique as its views…a net zero house that could be as much off the grid as practical…

To view the entire article in the digital magazine, CLICK HERE then flip over to page 56.

 

HOUZZ: “Female Architects Celebrate The Women Who Inspired Their Careers”

For Women’s History Month, 10 architects on Houzz describe the designers, mentors and trailblazers who influenced them

By Annie Thornton

…For Women’s History Month, which commemorates the valuable contributions that women — often unsung — have made throughout history, we wanted to let the inspiring female pros on Houzz tell us about the women who’ve inspired them.

We asked women in architecture, a field still dealing with gender inequities, to describe the designers in their lives who have mentored, guided or otherwise positively influenced them in their careers… Here are 10 of our favorite answers…

(Below: For this article, Houzz featured the “lantern pavilion” outdoor dining space Schechter created on the house she designed for herself and her husband and their assortment of “critters.”)

2. Arielle C. Schechter on Spanish architect and product designer Patricia Urquiola

Patricia Urquiola “is a true world-class design star. I am a huge fan of her work and her furniture. I’ve been following her work for years. What I especially love is her ability to always surprise. Her work never repeats — there is always something new in her newest collection that is unlike anything she’s done before or that one has ever seen,” Arielle Schecter says.

CLICK HERE to see all 10 responses from women in architecture.

DWELL: “Mason-Grabell ‘Beech’ House”

PHOTOS BY IMAN WOODS

Anne and Bruce, the clients for this project, had recently relocated to Chapel Hill from Florida. They considered themselves “climate refugees” who no longer wanted to live through the yearly hurricanes they were experiencing in Florida. They selected Arielle Schechter for her modernist style, then agree to ramp up the design “Net Zero Ready” in accordance with her commitment to sustainability. READ MORE 

WALTER Magazine – “The Carolina School: Distinct Modern Architecture in the Triangle”

A chance encounter between architects Frank Harmon and Harwell Hamilton Harris became the genesis of our own genre of regional modernism.

By J. Michael Welton

…Don Kranbuehl, a senior architect at Clark Nexsen and assistant professor at N.C. State…sees [Frank] Harmon—a mentor and role model—as the Southeastern representative of regional modernism, while Chapel Hill architect Arielle Schechter considers his range broader. “I don’t think he knows the influence he’s had,” she says.

Harmon’s style never insists on a single solution. Instead, individual responses are de rigueur. “The site is your building, and you do what’s appropriate,” Schechter learned from him. So when she designed a home in Pittsboro for a couple seeking privacy from neighbors, she clad its front in cypress for total opacity. But its rear is transparent, with a porch that overlooks nature on its one-acre site…

“What sets it apart are great connections to outdoors, sensitivity to site and volumetric buildings,” Schechter says. “And there’s a lot of creativity around, and a lot of points of view around how to design.”

It’s this variety of interpretations that make the Carolina School. Its architects follow similar principles, but like artists, they work from their own palettes… READ MORE

 

AECCafe: “Net Zero-Net Positive Modified Micropolis® House in North Carolina”

(photo by Iman Woods)

by Sanjay Gangal

This modern, Net Zero-Net Positive house is a customized version of one of architect Arielle Condoret Schechter’s Micropolis® houses, a collection of small, modern, sustainable house plans she continues to design that can be purchased outright or customized to accommodate specific needs.

Her clients, Cheryl and Ken Serdar, loved the original 950-square-foot Micropolis® plan she calls “Happy Family” but needed a bit more space. So Schechter enlarged it to 2222 heated square feet to include a spacious, spa-like master bathroom and a third bedroom that Cheryl will use for her office and jewelry-making studio. READ MORE