Photography by Bill Simone, www.billsimonephotography.com
The Fresco Green home became a local testing ground for products like Plyboo, which architect Kip Kelly used as a ceiling, and American Clay, which covers many of the home's walls.
Green building? It’s not just for hippies anymore, says architect Kip Kelly. “We used to look at the green marketplace for responsible products, but as we’ve shown here, we’re now going to the green marketplace for the cool products, the hip products, the stylish products. This whole project was all about showcasing those hip and cool products.”
“This project” is the Fresco Green home. It’s livable, calming, and attuned to the rhythms of the day and the warmth of the earth for light and comfort. In the course of an extensive remodel, this habitat for humans left behind little waste and was infused with sustainable style.
Homeowner Richard Scott is a partner in Fresco Green Building Supplies (717-519-8860; www.FrescoGreen.com), a resource for innovative, top-quality green products for new construction and remodeling with a showroom and education center in Lancaster. He offered his 1969 ranch home as a testing ground for Fresco Green’s construction philosophy and a showcase for its carefully selected recycled and sustainable materials.
Expect the unexpected.
“In here, you can start by looking up,” Scott says as a tour of the home moves from foyer to living room. No one can ever accuse the Fresco Green folks of stodgy thinking. A look up reveals that the living room ceiling isn’t covered in ceiling material at all, but in Plyboo (www.plyboo.com), a bamboo flooring with no added formaldehyde binder. Scott and his architect, Kip Kelly, chose Plyboo because its large, prefinished panels can cover the original ceiling, which was constantly cracking from the home’s original, and problematic, ceiling radiant heat system.
But the unconventional use of Plyboo didn’t stop there. Richard Frescatore, Scott’s business partner at Fresco Green, points to two high windows flanking the fireplace.
“There’s a continuation of the ceiling in the eaves,” Frescatore says.
Sure enough, the panels continue outside the window. Light from the windows floods the room, while the Plyboo overhangs extend the space and block excessive heat from the sun. Plyboo might be meant for floors, but that didn’t stop the remodelers from soaking a sample in water for two weeks. The Plyboo didn’t delaminate, proving its suitability for outdoor use.
“We like running floor materials up walls,” says architect Kelly. “We like putting wall materials on ceilings.”
In this house, craftsmen had permission to innovate. The concrete craftsman first attempted to create the fireplace hearth from 98 percent recycled concrete, but finally settled on a more workable mixture of 75 percent concrete and 5 percent recycled glass. But playtime took a backseat to the serious intent behind the Fresco Green remodel–the quest for a home that takes little from the earth and lives in harmony with nature.
“The closer you can recreate a natural system, the better,” says Kelly, whose firm, Nest Architecture (717-274-9551; www.NestArchitecture.com), has offices in Lebanon and in Culver City, California. “The house becomes an organism that is reacting to the natural environment. If you can replicate natural systems within that organism, it is going to be a safer place to live, a more comfortable place to live, and a place that feels better to be inside.”
A "LIVING" HOME
The home’s lighting best demonstrates the “living organism” approach. You won’t find a traditional ceiling fixture in the Fresco Green home. Long-lasting LED bulbs discreetly illuminate the space under cabinets, spotlight the artwork, or complement the home’s many solar tubes and skylights. Those, along with broad, strategically placed windows, recruit the sun as the home’s primary lighting source.
“During the day, we don’t have the lights on,” says Scott. “We don’t need them.”
Introducing natural light from two sides of a room creates balance, says Kelly. That’s why he created a “sky slot”–a kind of hidden skylight–in the home’s foyer to wash a wall of textured American Clay (www.americanclay.com) with sun and balance the light streaming in through a large pyramidal skylight.
In a remodel or new construction, try introducing more light by adding windows or inserting translucent panels into doors, Kelly suggests. “Your eye sees objects better in a room that has light coming in from two sides. You also eliminate that glare that happens when you only have light on one side.”
Translucence is a hallmark of the Fresco Green home. Door inserts are made from 3form, a 40 percent recycled resin inlaid with natural materials such as bear grass, ginkgo leaves and reeds. Bathroom cabinets are 3form creations. The master bedroom closet isn’t walled off but is comprised of 40 free-floating 3form cabinets “like jewel boxes,” says Scott.
The prevalence of 3form demonstrates another guiding principle of the Fresco Green home remodel–no waste. Scott’s wife, Cindy, is a Reiki master who worked with Kelly on design, and her Reiki room features tiny LED lights inlaid in the floor and covered with red-flowered 3form squares. The word Reiki comes from two Japanese words, which translate to “spiritually guided life force energy.” The Reiki room also features spare Plyboo inserted into the original oak closet doors.
“Instead of taking cutoffs and throwing them in the dumpster, we saved everything,” says Scott.
Speaking of cutoffs, the home’s insulation is recycled from discarded blue jeans but has “the same R-value [referring to insulation efficiency] as the nasty stuff,” says Scott.
If you were so inclined, Kelly says, you could rub it on your face, which obviously couldn’t be done with traditional irritating fiberglass insulation.
THE MATTER OF MATERIALS
Recycled and responsibly produced materials abound in the Fresco Green home. All trim and interiors are Forest Stewardship Council-certified as a testament to their responsible harvesting. Dark floor tiles are 40 percent recycled, with the added bonus of soaking up warmth from the sun on winter days and delivering it back into the room. “Woven wood” floors–“It means you take a whole bunch of little chips of wood and smash it up,” says Scott–are used in the bedrooms. Cabinets made from sunflower seeds surround the washer and dryer.
Kitchen counters are made from PaperStone, a smooth and warm surface derived from recycled office paper or FSC-certified cardboard and bound with cashew nut oil. And true to Fresco Green’s experimental mindset, the PaperStone extends to a shelf outside an unusual window cut underneath the cabinets.
“PaperStone is not supposed to be outside, but we decided to test it,” Scott says. “A four-foot overhang keeps off the sun and moisture.”
Another benefit to green remodeling and building: Healthy air. “There were no fumes on site,” Kelly says. Binders, glues and paints are non-toxic. Boiled wood on a front deck was pressurized without formaldehyde or other toxic products. Workers don’t inhale toxic fumes during the project, and homeowners live with healthy air.
The air is further purified by American Clay, a breathable wall covering that’s popular in the Southwest and is quickly winning fans in the East; it is available through Fresco Building Supplies’ family of craftspersons. American Clay is an earth clay harvested in New Mexico and mixed with natural colorants for a wide choice in tones.
“You make your color,” says Scott. Applied with a trowel, American Clay can mimic the smooth feel of plaster or create texture on a wall. And nearly any other additive–like the straw that the Scotts used on the dining room wall–can create even more texture.
“It absorbs moisture in the air from both sides,” says Frescatore. “It somewhat filters that and releases it in a regulated fashion. If you add it in a large enough bath area that didn’t have exhaust fans and took a hot shower, the likelihood of your mirror fogging up is practically zilch.”
The feel of the Fresco Green home may be its greatest asset. The satisfaction of knowing that recycled products predominate combines with the natural light to create a sense of serenity. The home’s green systems–rainwater collection, geothermal heating and cooling, photovoltaic heat and solar water, a partial garden roof for insulation and runoff control, and pipes that circulate water for the shower until it heats–demand little in the way of fossil fuels, keeping utility bills low.
True green building, says Frescatore, results from the collaboration of homeowner, supplier, builders and architect. Teamwork keeps the cost of building green at reasonable levels, too.
“We’re collaborating, we’re talking, we’re reducing the opportunity for costly mistakes and making sure that the building has the right-sized HVAC system in it, and making sure we understand what adding more window space does to the thermal condition of the building, and understanding the envelope. That can all be done right up front.”
Kelly calls it “looking to the natural world for clues as to how human habitat should be designed,” even as green becomes mainstream. Homeowner Rick Scott believes that all things are living, and “we just happen to be living with it.”
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A dramatic front door was designed to allow natural light into the home's entrance area.
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The home's kitchen features countertops made from compressed paper pulp called PaperStone.
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A portion of the home's rear roof is actually a "living roof," covered in a variety of plants and sedum to eliminate water runoff.
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The rear of the home is lined with large glass doors that open up, "California-style," to create a sense of bringing nature right into the home.
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The roof of the Fresco Green home is covered with a bank of solar panels for energy production.
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Natural light streams into the home's first floor master bedroom.
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Architect Kip Kelly portrait by Donovan Roberts Witmer
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Rick Frescatore & Rick Scott, proprietors of Fresco Green Building Supply
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Transluscent 3form panels featuring ginkgo leaves, bear grass and reeds were used to create dividing walls, closets and even cabinets in the home's master bathroom.
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Windows line the back of the house and bake the home in passive solar warmth in winter when it needs it. However, the home's deep overhanging roof line shades it from the summer sun.
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Two large mediative statues greet guests as they arrive into the home.
