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Fresh start

Architect Gary Wolf invigorates a sprawling contemporary with a unifying vision and a hot color scheme.

If ever the old saw about a picture and a thousand words held true, it is in the case of the '60s-era Weston house that Boston architect Gary Wolf recently redesigned for a professional couple.

Describe it - a huge red curved wall in a cavernous living room, a tropical blue-green wall in a dining room that doubles as a passageway, and a sunny yellow wall in a long, slightly askew hallway - and the house comes across as a hodgepodge of quirky spaces and loud, incoherent colors.

But see it, and the contemporary-style U-shaped house presents itself like a beautiful string of gemstones glimmering in a jeweler's case. Its expansive glass walls wrap around a peaceful courtyard and offer sightlines to colorful spaces that harmonize rather than contrast. "This is the most tranquil space I have ever lived in," says the wife. "It has made a remarkable difference in my own mental status."

The house conveys a sense of composure because Wolf kept the focus of the redesign on the whole rather than the parts. "What Gary did was teach me about unification of space, about creating a theme, about looking at the whole space," says the wife. He did that largely through the use of materials and color. And by setting limits.

"Gary really imposed a discipline," says the husband, a real estate development consultant. "He held us to his principles - and we knew that he was right."

"When we were finished," says the wife, a health-care professional who works mainly with low-income and underserved clients, "we had the symphony as opposed to the song."

The sense of unity comes from great attention to details - right down to what color to paint the rafters in the outside overhangs and how to plant the garden. "What you saw when you looked out the window was tremendously important," says the wife, "because the windows are omnipresent. There is the feeling of the outside coming indoors."

"The virtue of the house," says Wolf, "is the courtyard plan. My goal was to take the existing structure and use the three colored walls - red, green, and yellow - to tie it all together."

Each of the three public spaces facing the courtyard - the living room, dining room, and long hallway - provides views to the other two. Before the renovation, the house seemed disjointed, "Each wing had seemed a separate world," says Wolf.

"Now," says the husband, "it's wonderful to look across the courtyard, especially at night, and you know it's all a part of the whole."

The sprawling six-bedroom residence, which a real estate agent had described to the couple as "this crazy house in Weston," was much bigger than what they intended to buy. "We had started out with the idea of downsizing," says the wife. With three of their four children grown, their big Victorian-era house in Wellesley had become a burden. "But as we looked at smaller houses," she says, "the windows got smaller, the ceilings got lower."

While the Weston house had its problems, they kept coming back to it. "This was a very big house," says the husband. "It was a strange combination of rustic and contemporary, with stone floors and a fountain inside. There was a huge circular staircase at the far end of the living room, and previous owners had installed lots of white marble tile. It was a white elephant, but we thought we could make it a neat house."

To do that, clients and architect agreed the floor plan needed to be improved. Out came the fountain and circular staircase. In went the curved wall that gave definition to the huge living room. "Gary saw the need to separate the private and the public spaces," says the husband, "and that's what that wall does." Behind it Wolf created a hall that leads to the bedroom wing and a demure staircase that leads to the master bedroom suite, the only second-floor space in the house.

The living room was devoid of architectural detail, and despite two walls of glass - one facing the courtyard to the west and another the pool to the south - the room got no morning light. "The east wall had no windows at all," says Wolf. To give the room focus, he installed a fireplace surrounded by maple plywood panels, which extend the full length of the east wall and about two thirds of its height. Above the panels, Wolf tucked triangular windows, which, he says, "brought in morning light in a lyrical way." He also installed a round skylight in the cathedral ceiling.

The maple panels provide a unifying thread for Wolf's design. He used them to create what he calls screens - room-defining walls that don't quite reach the ceiling - to bracket the dining area.

The original front entry was also problematic. Externally, it was obscurely tucked into a corner of the house. Internally, it offered no views of the grand spaces inside or the courtyard beyond. Wolf moved the entry and created a vestibule with a curved wall of glass blocks. Inside the vestibule, the visitor gets an immediate view to the courtyard.

The new entry also introduced the slate tile flooring, the common material that links all the public spaces. In the living and dining rooms, Wolf used the slate to visually scale down the space. In both rooms, the seating areas are designated by hardwood flooring, while the transitional space is defined by the tiles.

There are finer details that more subtly add to the harmony. For example, here and there a black ceramic tile is set in the wood paneling. "Those squares were one of the unifying themes," says the wife, and while they appear random, "a great deal of thought went into placing them."

In the remaining wing, kitchen and family room were located off a long hallway that held a second staircase. The hall terminated in a blank wall behind which was a bedroom suite.

"I wanted to open up that end of the house," says the husband. So, they replaced part of the bedroom and bath space with a screened porch that provides an inviting terminus to the hall. In an innovative move, Wolf rebuilt the hallway's inside wall so that it is slightly angled, making it narrower where it connects to the dining room, which links the east and west wings, and wider as you approach the new porch.

Niches, which hold art and collectibles, are cut into the bright yellow wall, a nod to the wife's appreciation of Southwestern architecture. "We couldn't do adobe," she says, but the niches help create the illusion of thick, ruddy walls.

That Southwestern influence can also be found in the living room's curved wall, where a niche accommodates a statue of St. Francis.

Southwestern influences are also evident in the color choices and paint finish. "We wanted colors that were vibrant but natural," says Wolf. To paint them, they used a ragging technique that gives the illusion of a rough surface.

For the dining room wall, "We picked green because we wanted an underwater feeling," says the wife. As for the yellow hallway, "I wanted it to be the color of marmalade."

Of course, selecting the right color involved trying lots of samples. "We were open to the evocative quality of color," she says. Now, entering that yellow hall "is like walking into a field of daffodils in the morning. And I love walking through the dining room at all hours of the day or night. It's a thrilling sense to see color on display. To me, these walls are a work of art."

"I see the red wall from the top of the stairs," says her husband, "and I don't make that trip [through the house] without consciously appreciating the colors."

He adds, "We love living here. The design process was very interactive, and the house we have is very much our house. The impetus for much of what was done was Gary's, but this is not Gary's house."

The themes continue in the gardens, which were designed by Ann Sinclair of Bonnie Ulin Inc. in Wellesley. "We were looking for a natural woodland look," says the wife. And, mindful of the four seasons, the plan included grasses and shrubs that have year-round appeal.

"There is a sense that there is no design to your design," says the wife, but, as with the interior, subtle themes run through the landscape, giving it a sense of unity. "There are a lot of geometric shapes - an interesting combination of straight lines and curves," says the husband. And the same plants are used throughout.

Muses the wife: "Things that we didn't think about in our old house suddenly become so much more important here." Her husband adds, "This house allows - almost demands - that you do large things."