The Biltmore Mansion Conjures Imagery of Castles, but
Asheville Home Architects
Normally Design Humbler Residences
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Asheville home architects are unique. We seek to blend our clients’ lifestyles with their sites. They are attracted to us because of the fact that we design a special Blue Ridge Mountain home design version of house plans that strikes a resonance in people’s hearts souls and minds. That is a good thing… That is what we are trying to do.
Also, people from Charlotte, Asheville, Lake Toxaway, the Mount Mitchell area, Boone, Cashiers, Sapphire, Glenville, Highlands, Franklin, Canton, Waynesville, Murphy, Cullowhee, Seneca and other locations in the Western North Carolina area appreciate the fact that we live and work in these parts every day. It’s a great place to be!
Asheville home architects listen to people describing their hopes for their mountain dream residences and although we have heard much of it, we always discern something special about each prospective project. Whether it is a log cabin, stone mansion or small cottage design, we seek to be the best home architects on the planet for each and every assignment.
Asheville, North Carolina is about 60 miles from Cashiers, North Carolina, although Cashiers to the Asheville airport, in Fletcher, NC , is only about 40 miles, or about 1-1/2 hours in a car (in this area, probably more like a 4×4 SUV). This distance is inconsequential, as Asheville HOME ARCHITECTS ® design mountain house plans all over the Appalachian Mountains, North Carolina and the World. Senior staff architect, Rand Soellner, AIA, is a member of the Asheville area American Institute of Architects. Other leading architects here include Bowers-Eills-Watson, Domus Architecture, William Langdon and Legerton Architecture. Some of us specialize in mountain design. Whether you are looking for new house designs in Asheville, New York, Sedona, Atlanta, Austin, Chattanooga, Denver, or Yellowstone, that’s where you’ll find mountain house architects .
Asheville Home Architects Have a Unique Challenge
Asheville home architects have a special task: make their new residential designs feel like they are really in the mountains. Does that sound strange? Well, for those of you actually living in Asheville, you know what we are talking about, because Asheville really doesn’t have a very mountainous environment. To people from Dubai or Qatar or Atlanta or Dallas or Florida, Asheville probably seems hilly, but not so to the folks only an hour and a half due west, because that is where the Real Blue Ridge Mountains are, near the southern tip of the Appalachian chain. In towns like Lake Toxaway, Cashiers, Sapphire, Glenville and Highlands, collectively referred to locals as “The Plateau,” is where you will find real mountains, up to 4,600 feet above sea level and more. In contrast, Asheville home architects find themselves designing projects at only about 2,134 ‘ ASL.
Still, there is much to be desired in Asheville, which is why it is home to about 75,000 people, with an average population density of 1,805 people per square mile. The cost of living in Asheville is only 91.3% of the USA average, so it costs less to live in Asheville than in some other near-mountain communities in the United States. Asheville’s land area comprises 40.9 square miles and the median household income is $36,854. Buncombe County contains Asheville. There are historic areas as well as the convenience of big box discount stores.
The nearby Biltmore mansion, long holding the record as the largest house in America (until technology company CEOs begain buidling their megahomes in just the last couple of decades), has a significant impact on the Asheville residential architects creating house plans for clients actually within the City limits. Biltmore was completed in 1895 and involved craftsmen from Italy and Germany, who remained in this area after the grand house was done (2). The Biltmore Mansion was heavily influenced by Versailles (outside of Paris) and this author has personally been to and seen both of these large house in person and the preference is for Biltmore, which seems to be more in tune with its surrounding environment, while Versailles is surrounded with dirt for several hundred feet until the “real” landscaping begins. The Biltmore Mansion exerts an undeniable upscaling of both commercial and residential architecture in the Asheville area. In the post-Biltmore construction era in Asheville, there was a strong movement on the part of local early 20th Century architects like Richard Sharp Smith to unify artisan craftsmanship with architecture. This resulted in the unique Blue Ridge Arts and Crafts and “Craftsman Style” residential architecture that has evolved into the present day (2).
Houses in the area in higher-end communities exhibit a civilized version of mountain features, typically with smaller beams and posts and more intricate and careful detailing, a more Eastern gentrification of Arts & Crafts Style residential architecture. Asheville architects obviously absorb these influences.
Residences in the nearby mountains to the west begin exhibiting a more robust proportion for stone work, posts and beam architecture and a simplification of detailing, going for a bigger “wow” effect that typically costs less per square foot. But the effect of the big city on Asheville home architects is undeniable, even those who design daily in the Blue Ridge Mountains, just to the west, like home architects Rand Soellner.
Green Residential Design Influences Asheville Home Architects
There is a tremendous surge in public interest in Green Design and Green Home Architects and Green Architecture in general and no article about home architects would be complete without reference to this fascinating subject. Everyone is talking about it and have a general idea that it is a good thing for our planet. Many Asheville home architects now create their projects with an eye to the environment and in being better stewards of our World, in particular, using materials, products and systems that are more sustainable and renewable and that burn fewer fossil fuels in their manufacture and incorporation into your project. For more detailed information about this, see HOME ARCHITECTS ® (1) related articles and posts and websites (click on any of the following items to be taken to those webpages):
Green Gauge
Green Architecture, Global Warming and data from NOAA and NRDC & what you can do about it.
Green Architects and Sustainable Architecture
Energy Efficient Home Architects
Healthy Home Design Program by Rand Soellner Architect
Natural Materials Architecture, Organic Architecture
Mountain Architects, The Answer to Green Home Design and Green House Plans
HOME ARCHITECTS ® is one of the world’s leading Green Design companies and Green Home Architects and in fact is the founder of the Healthy Home Design program, which was trademarked in Asheville. Firm Senior Architect Rand Soellner created the architectural program and concept design and master planning for the new Florida Solar Energy Center and incorporated low-impact, environmentally sensitive concepts into all of his projects since the 1970s.
Contact information for Asheville HOME ARCHITECTS ® :
828-269-9046
Additional sources of information for this press release:
(1) Green Home Architects Index pages.
(2) William Langdon AIA.
links and resources:
www.CashiersNCHomes.com