Doerfer House

-Chapel Hill, NC

The Design Phase for this house was an interesting exploration over the period of three years, where Bill spent enough evenings at the client’s dining table (the meeting table), that he practically felt like an extended family member. The project is also known as the "Black Bull", because he can't seem to remember the name of the crazy alpha Brahma Bull that decided to chase him into the woods one day when he was marking the site (this bull and a few cattle still call the site home)!

Over the period of three years objet produced and reviewed 54 iterations of the Doerfer Farmhouse… It wasn't that the clients didn't like Version-1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 21, or 48... It was more so a situation where they'd say “Hey, that's a good idea, now how about if we try this...?”

It was a wonderful and rare collaborative process where schedule was not an issue (until the arrival of a 4th child, and thus a tightened project budget made it an issue). The project began as a Tadao Ando inspired house for 5; and then, somewhere around Version-21, the announcement came that the Doerfers would now be 6; and the owner’s suddenly became more concerned with resale value in the traditional outskirts of Chapel Hill, and the modernist Japanese transitioned into a modern farm house.

At first we thought farmhouse?!?

So, Bill took two road trips… One from Chapel Hill to Boone, NC, and another from Washington, DC to Gettysburg, PA, and came to realize that the farmhouse IS modernism at its best… Everything about a farm structure is as-it-is for a reason of need and function.