Thanks to a plenitude of kid-friendly amenities, Tom and Toni Oreck’s home-to-be in The Ramble will likely be hangout number one for the couple’s three young children and their school chums. And because of its cutting-edge design, the structure should also prove a magnet to arbiters of environmental sustainability.
Most recently of Nashville, the Orecks are spending the school year in Florence, Italy, as their home in the Biltmore Forest subdivision is constructed. Like their celebrated summer retreat in Burnsville’s Mountain Air community, full of earthy-chic play spaces that make heirloom use of reclaimed woods, their permanent abode will highlight local building materials and native landscaping, including an organic garden.
Designed by Brevard-based Platt Architecture, PA (Al Platt and son Parker) with Bud Holland, the Ramble project is one where avant-garde energy innovations have proved integral to design. First, though, the perks. The kids will get their own wing — three bedrooms and a bonus room to mirror the larger rec room downstairs. A 40-foot by 16-foot geothermal outdoor swimming pool from local maker Medallion will be Gunite-sealed and insulated to minimize heat loss into the ground. The home will also include a spa, an open-air pizza oven, a pergola, and a terrace — all sheltered by a brick retaining wall and convenient to the neighborhood walking trail.
Combining luxury with community is, after all, the raison d’être of The Ramble, which was planned by George Vanderbilt’s descendants. Platt points out: “The Orecks are a very active family with very active kids. I’ve never been to their [Mountain Air] home when it wasn’t full of people.” But the Ramble house will be the locus for a vibrant social life in town. “It’s a year-round home, a base for regular, school-year life with family and friends.” The building will be adjacent to an expansive greenway, Longmeadow Park, but is also minutes away from school, piano lessons, restaurants — no long commutes required.
Despite all the extras, and despite being built on three contiguous lots — a configuration that gives the family an optional private drive and entrance — the house itself, subtly gabled and already settled-looking in digital models, displays a conspicuous lack of hauteur.
“It isn’t another massive structure with a lot of grand interior spaces,” according to the architect. Besides the sleep-and-play suite for the Oreck offspring, Tom and Toni will respectively enjoy an office and a photography studio, and an exercise area will surely help the sporty family weather the fickle local winters. But the rooms are scaled intimately, due to a vigorous, collaborative conservation effort that required the house be “efficiency-driven more than style-driven,” says Platt.
Superior insulation was crucial. And compartmentalized wings instead of an open plan freed the way for extensive use of alternative energy, including geothermal air, hydronic heating and a 10-kilowatt solar photovoltaic array on the roof of the children’s wing. A tractable design will also allow strict control over resources: Tom Oreck can adjust all lighting and HVAC elements remotely, using his laptop.
The owner is justifiably proud of these innovations. Consider the Orecks the Kennedys of enviro-consciousness. Tom says he learned a lot about sustainable design from his brother Bruce, founder of alt-power trailblazer Zero Carbon Initiative and recently named U.S. Ambassador to Finland (the world leader in ecological achievement according to the standards set for countries by the World Economic Forum’s Environmental Sustainability Index). The newest generation shoulders the mantle, too: At the Orecks’ former home in Nashville, Tom’s eldest daughter, then 8, led a winning campaign to rid her school cafeteria of Styrofoam trays.
But Oreck also acknowledges the wisdom of an earlier age. “The design concept looks backwards in history as well as forwards,” he says. The home’s porches “are designed the way they would have been before electricity, so that you gain the most solar heat while minimizing the impact of the sun.”
He didn’t want an echoey, futuristic cavern of a house that stood out for its techie elements at the expense of comfort. “Sustainable design tends to be a tradeoff,” muses Oreck. “Either you go for what’s comfortable and cozy and aesthetically pleasing or you have great sustainability but a very minimalist, Spartan effect. What we’re trying to do with Platt Architecture is achieve a good balance — one where we utilize available technology and move toward optimal efficiency, while maintaining living space that is comfortable and family-friendly with an exterior design that enhances the neighborhood.”
That yen for balance is not likely to end once the ribbon is cut on Casa Oreck. The idea, says Tom, is to inspire his children — and, by way of example, other homeowners — “to do good things, to be community oriented, and to recognize their responsibility to help make the world a healthier place for their future children.”