Pastoral Panache
Urbane and enigmatic, this is a farmhouse like no other
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 BENJAMIN BENSCHNEIDER / THE SEATTLE TIMES THE HOLZES long wanted to build their dream home on a knoll in the middle of their family farm. They turned to Chris Bigos of Zervas Group Architects to cast their dream in wood, stone, glass and steel. "It's about the view," Howard says. "We're not going to plant no trees or nothin'— it's done. The cows can come up as close as they want."
BENJAMIN BENSCHNEIDER / THE SEATTLE TIMES THREE BIG BASALT ROCKS stand sentry just inside the front door, blocking the view of the living room beyond. "We thought about having a Zen garden here, but that was too common. Plus, we have cats (if you know what she means). Theirs is a house that says, "Do touch." JudyHolz says, "I have trouble in art museums."
BENJAMIN BENSCHNEIDER / THE SEATTLE TIMES "I DIDN'T REALIZE how flat the land is to the north of us," Howard says. "Basically we're just looking right up into Canada." The view is enhanced by a wall of glass. Howard made the dining table of maple and powder-coat steel.
BENJAMIN BENSCHNEIDER / THE SEATTLE TIMES A COVERED WALKWAY leads from the long driveway to the main entry, which is defined on the outside by a roof monitor on the rising roof plane. The exterior is vertical tongue-and-groove cedar.
BENJAMIN BENSCHNEIDER / THE SEATTLE TIMES CLERESTORY WINDOWS bring light directly into the kitchen. The bowed kitchen island echoes the arc of the wall of windows looking toward Canada. The surface is a pasture-green concrete top embedded with small stones. The counters are granite. Howard crafted the pullout table for two using 2-inch-thick maple. |
IF A COW could have a passing thought, there are a bunch on the Holz farm in Bellingham that one day in early 2005 surely must have looked up and wondered, "What the . . . ?"
For there, in the middle of their pasture, stood a new building. It was like no farmhouse they had ever seen. It seemed to sprout from the land and take on a life of its own in 2,500 square feet of glass, cedar, fir, stone and concrete. There were shallow-pitched, low-lying forms east and west. Expanses reaching to the sky on the north. Pavilions aside cedar boxes on either side of a flared, stone-clad central volume.
Howard and Judy Holz call it home. And Whatcom County dairy country will never be the same.
"That's one of the joys of being older," Judy says. "You see what you like and you go for it. This hill's been calling for a house for a long time. We very much wanted to keep a Northwest feel. Howie's grandfather came from Norway, and we wanted a taste of that.
"But our No. 1 consideration was light and clean lines."
The 120-acre spread has been in Howard's family since 1910. Howard and Judy built their first, more-typical, house there in 1967, near his parents. He worked the dairy like his father before him, and last year turned it, and 145 milk cows, over to his son.
But do not mistake the Holzes for typical farm folk.
A family, and friends, affair
The Holz project has the feel of a very contemporary yet good old-fashioned barn-raising. The home truly was built on the friends-and-family plan. Howard Holz helped build it with his cousins, John and Jim of Holz Construction. Another cousin, Harold Holz of Holz Enterprises, did the metal work. High-school pal Dave Wiggins of Cowden Gravel & Ready Mix laid the concrete, and another friend, Svein Nilsen of Viking Masonry, did the stone work.
"You have your preconceived notions of what people want," says architect Chris Bigos of Zervas Group Architects, who designed the house. "When someone sees a house like that they assume the owner is more of a hip, urban person rather than a farmer. It was a pleasant surprise that they wanted something unique to them, unique to their site. Not something like their neighbors put up."
Judy, a painter who also weaves, supervised the home's color palette. She wanted greens and natural materials "without trying to be lodge-like" but echoing the surrounding pasture and trees.
Howard has become their own personal furniture maker. Using wood from the land (mostly maple) that he logged, milled, dried and stacked (for what he didn't yet know), he has expertly designed and crafted a contemporary dining table, chairs, shelves, side tables, a grandfather clock, exterior doors, vanity and, remarkably, a bathtub and sink.
"It takes a long time to make chairs," he says, still working to finish dining-room seating of maple and powder-coat steel. "I see why they charge so much for the good ones."
But it's the siting that's most exciting. Credit the knoll: It rises gently from the south with the house perched at the edge of an abrupt drop to the north. And Bigos: A bowed wall of floor-to-ceiling windows makes the living room a live-entertainment center that reaches for the scenery beyond. The home received the People's Choice Award from the Northwest Chapter of the American Institute of Architects in December.
"It's about the view," says Howard.
And it is? Canada. Really. The Holzes can see chairlift lights at night. During the day they watch eagles catching drafts; red-tailed hawks diving for a kill; the crisp, white Canadian coastal range; and cows grazing in the expansive green, green, pasture. Mount Baker squats behind a stand of trees, but Howard says, "We don't need Baker."
Sitting alone in the middle of the farm, the house needs no covering for its windows. But three big basalt monoliths stand sentry just inside the glass front door, blocking the view of the living room beyond. They are privacy screen, cat magnet and sculpture. While the home fits snugly into the site and is a complement to the landscape, it is other-worldly, a new vision.
"One of the keys was to make the house an enigmatic structure out there in the field," Bigos says. "Something not easily read at first glance, something that draws you in out of interest: What is that out there among the cows?"
Rebecca Teagarden is assistant editor of Pacific Northwest magazine. Benjamin Benschneider is a Pacific Northwest staff photographer.
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