Angelica and Gustavo Nechar moved many instances in Brazil, the place they have been born and raised, and in France, the place their careers flourished and so they owned a Haussmann-style condo within the seventeenth Arrondissement of Paris. But it wasn’t till Mr. Nechar’s work as a human-resources govt introduced the couple to Houston in 2013 that they realized all of their earlier properties had lacked one engaging factor: a design conceived only for them.
The expansive suburban home they purchased upon arriving in Houston, they determined, wasn’t fairly proper. For one factor, it was too huge for a pair with two grownup sons. And it was too removed from the motion of the town, which had pleasantly shocked them with its cosmopolitan vibe and cultural choices, even after 13 years in Paris.
What they needed, they realized, was to construct a home within the metropolis that will assist an city, walkable way of life.
“After 30 years of being married, we decided to build our own house for the first time,” stated Ms. Nechar, 48, who left her job as a lawyer to open a showroom for the Brazilian furnishings firm Etel across the similar time.
Added Mr. Nechar, 55, “We had always been moving and buying houses from others, and living in places that didn’t have our soul.”
They needed to have the ability to entertain pals in type. “We love to welcome people into our house and to cook, which we learned in France,” he stated. “When we talked about our house, we wanted a place where people would feel good about being with us, sharing a meal or a nice glass of wine.”
In 2018, they discovered a drained bungalow on a fascinating midblock lot within the Montrose neighborhood, inside strolling distance of the Menil Collection museum, the Rothko Chapel and plenty of eating places. They purchased it for about $550,000, with plans to demolish it and begin recent.
Their seek for an architect to conceive the home led them to StudioMET Architects, after they’d admired the boxy, modernist properties with lengthy, flat roofs and loads of glass that the agency had in-built Houston.
“A contemporary house — that’s what we wanted,” Ms. Nechar stated. “We didn’t want to play like some people here who build houses like castles.”
By the top of that yr, StudioMET had designed a four-bedroom, 3,800-square-foot home with an L-shaped footprint, and had filed for a constructing allow.
“They wanted it to be somewhat subtle — they didn’t want a big statement from the exterior,” stated Stephen Andrews, a accomplice on the agency. The two-story design, which has an higher stage suspended over a poolside patio and outside kitchen on the again, aimed to maximise pure gentle and connections to the outside, he stated, whereas preserving privateness from the road and the neighbors.
But as quickly because the plans have been finalized, the Nechars started having doubts. They apprehensive that the home would possibly look an excessive amount of just like the architects’ different initiatives, once they needed one thing distinctive. So the couple referred to as on Meedi Hidalgo, a neighborhood inside designer, for a second opinion.
“I saw this was a really wonderful opportunity to highlight their cultural background and personalities,” Ms. Hidalgo stated. “I wanted to really capture their culture and give some emotion and poetry to the space.”
She not solely supplied steerage on furnishings and finishes, but in addition instructed just a few architectural modifications. Studying the midcentury-modern designs of Brazil, she concluded that the home ought to have some sensual shapes.
“Brazilian midcentury design was dominated by Oscar Niemeyer, who really loved the curve, and women,” she stated. “So I decided that we should try to bring in curved lines as much as we could.”
Inside the entrance door, Ms. Hidalgo modified a straight staircase right into a sculptural, curved one with open treads. She added one other huge sweeping curve the place the ceiling drops between the lounge and kitchen. Upstairs, she changed an oblong pivot door to the first suite with a pocket door inside an asymmetrical arch. And in a nod to the couple’s time in France, she added a floor-to-ceiling, wood-and-brass display from Paris-based Red Edition between the kitchen and eating space.
She additionally sought so as to add interesting textures and colours. Where there have been plans to make use of a typical brick on exterior partitions, she pushed for a skinny, glazed Italian brick that wraps from the outside to the inside of the home. For the lounge, she commissioned customized concrete panels adorned with summary shapes, together with one which rolls again to disclose a tv.
In the first bed room, she put in dip-dyed wool curtains in a watery blue from Holly Hunt. In the first toilet, she used large-scale porcelain wall tile, for the look of worn plaster partitions.
By the time the home was accomplished in April 2021, the Nechars had spent about $1.3 million, assured that they’d created an inimitable residence. “It’s a project that really embodies who we are, and it’s just phenomenal,” Mr. Nechar stated. “We’re very happy to have accomplished this.”
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