It's not that Foster's choice of materials is so unusual. Maple kitchen cabinets? You can buy them at Ikea, which Foster did.

AIA Home of the Year judges El Baylis, principal architect, Baylis Architects Mary Johnston, co-principal architect, Johnston Architects Jerry Fulks, president, Jerry Fulks & Co.

It's not that his budget was extraterrestrial. Built for $83 a square foot, it required the same belt-tightening mentality as most folks have when building their own place. (Should we mention here his recycled kitchen appliances and stock windows? Not vinyl-clad frames, which are wood at their core, but real vinyl frames through and through, and thoroughly inexpensive.)

And it's not even the exterior materials he used: "concrete masonry units" - concrete blocks to you and me - and painted composite hardboard siding. Lots of architects use those.

No, it's the shape, the design, the deceptive elegance and ingenuity that set architect David Foster's three-bedroom, 2 1/2-bath home apart.

Like none other, it's earned him The Seattle Times/American Institute of Architects Home of the Year award, presented Friday at a ceremony at the University of Washington's Kane Hall. His design was chosen from among last year's 10 AIA Featured Homes published in The Seattle Times' Home/Real Estate section.

Clerestory windows provide privacy from neighboring houses, yet flood the kitchen with sunlight. Stock cabinets and recycled appliances helped Foster keep within his $160,000 construction budget.

Home of the Year judges were architects El Baylis and Mary Johnston and builder Jerry Fulks. Their marching orders weren't to choose the "best" home built circa 2000, but rather to pick the project that most successfully tells a story, be it overcoming a challenge, fulfilling the owner's design criteria or breaking new ground.

With his off-the-shelf materials and roughly $160,000 construction budget, Foster seemingly wouldn't be in a position to be the leading candidate.

That's until you see the home he designed for himself, his wife Nancy and their 4-year-old son Jonathan. It's in Seattle's Squire Park neighborhood, which is in the Central Area. He built it with the help of contractor Nick Milkin.

When was the last time you saw a perfectly square house? Yup; this one's 30 by 30 and 1,900 square feet.

When was the last time you saw a house whose bedrooms are on the ground floor, main living spaces above - and realized it wasn't built into a hillside, but instead sits bold upright on a table-flat lot?

And when did you last see a hipped roof - like a peaked four-cornered hat with its edges slightly flattened - poised atop a bright yellow house whose rigid symmetry and curlicue balconies give it a decidedly European attitude?

Architect Johnston, co-designer of Stonewater Condominiums, which won a 1999 Home of the Year award, was wowed. Foster's design "is not just a copy of the house next door. Foster's has historical references, but they're skewed . . . like the use of the concrete block. That's what makes it so exciting. And it's so restricting to have a square plan and make it work."

"I was trying really hard to let simplicity guide the design, and not embellish it too much," says Foster.

"I was trying really hard to let simplicity guide the design, and not embellish it too much," Foster explains modestly. "When I look at some of the elements of the house - the balconies, standard doors, standard roof shape, the eaves - they're not groundbreaking in any way. But they're interpreted in different ways."

That Foster's home has European references is no affectation. Born in Seattle, raised in Maryland, he earned his architectural degree in Frankfurt, Germany. A master's in architecture, conferred in 1990 by the University of Washington, followed. Self-employed, he has a mostly residential portfolio.

For years Foster and his family lived happily in a 100-year-old house across the street from their new one. When a neighbor offered to sell him a corner lot occupied only by a big boulder, he quickly paid the requested $30,000, relocated the boulder and began pondering the challenge of his 2,580 square-foot lot.

Of the house being square he says, "I don't think I looked at it either as a drawback or a plus, but I can say it's the first time I've ever done a square house."

Next came the floor plan. Foster says most builders working with narrow in-city lots plop down stock plans better suited for suburbia. Translation: The owners find themselves living above a two-car garage, which takes up the whole front of the house.

Foster thinks an uninviting facade of garage doors "destroys the neighborhood feel, which is based on lots of windows, front porches, nicely landscaped lots."

Instead of a house for his cars, he has a concrete parking pad, off street, next to his back door. That's a money saver, too.

The second-floor living and dining area spans the entire 30-foot width of the home. To keep the 11 1Ž2-foot ceiling from making the room seem cavernous, Foster painted it a dark olive. The color continues on the banding atop the windows.

Then came the decision to put the main public spaces atop the three bedrooms (plus two baths and a utility/mudroom). Basically, "it's just a strategy for opening up the main living spaces to the outside," he explains. "By raising the living spaces above the street, I'm able to keep wide-open windows without the sense you're right on the street and everyone can look right in on you. And by having the bedrooms down below, I can put in smaller windows, which increases separation from the sidewalk."

But that decision brought its own dilemma, one he pondered in great detail.

It was the entry.

How could he get visitors from the recessed front door to the upstairs without feeling they were traveling down a tunnel of a hallway or intruding on the privacy of the bedrooms?

By designing what he calls a "punctuation point" in the center of the house - a vestibule into which he built an art niche. It's the first thing guests see. Overhead is a raised ceiling with recessed lighting. Below, the concrete floor is scored with lines delineating the vestibule space.

And he paid particular attention to the stairway. Much of it is an assemblage of industrial steel C-channels holding maple treads. The balustrades are stainless steel, topped by a rich mahogany handrail.

Lastly he placed the bedroom and bathroom doors so most can't be seen until guests are actually inside the house.

The upper floor, some 961 square feet, is nearly devoid of interior walls. Turn right at the top of the stairs and there's an office space and powder room. Turn left and there's the kitchen, bathed in light from multipane clerestory windows. Maple cabinets. Steel accents. Concrete countertops. Wood floor. "I shopped and got a good price on maple flooring," Foster says with satisfaction.

Straight ahead, behind a partial wall of cabinets that house a gas fireplace and entertainment center, are the living and dining areas. They span the full width of this floor and flow easily into the kitchen and office areas.

Where to start with this space? Perhaps with the colors.

For the walls Foster chose something called "Italian ochre," and for the ceiling, "olive black." It's a color combo he says tested his wife Nancy's faith in him.

"When the paint went on I never forgot the look on her face because it takes some real assertion to put colors that dark on walls and ceiling." Particularly a ceiling the color of black olives.

But the palate works because of the rooms' two key ingredients: light and volume. They're provided by 11 1/2-foot ceilings and banks of windows as tall as basketball players. Lots of windows, plus French doors, infuse this space with energy and give it an almost stage-like quality. Being on the second floor adds to that, of course.

Foster loves being above the street, particularly on warm summer days when he can throw open the French doors and stand on one of the two Juliet balconies. They're recycled, by the way, from an old building, and were on their way to terminal corrosion when he had them refinished.

Though one floor up, the balconies function as the home's front porch, offering "a wonderful place to stand and observe life on the street," he says. "As often as not, someone will be passing by . . . a neighbor . . . and we can call down and talk."

All this impressed the Home of the Year judges mightily. Said Fulks: "What I'm most impressed with is the commitment to a unique program, the commitment to the neighborhood, the commitment to budget. You can see in 10 years, with the hedge grown in more, the house will float above it."

But what they couldn't have judged was what the house is actually like to live in, something Foster himself didn't fully realize until his family had resided a while. Their previous home had many small rooms. Now spending so much time in what's essentially a loft space "has actually brought us together as a family. We're all kind of together and communication is easy."

That's yet another winning attribute.

"AIA Featured Homes: Another Look"