The current issue of Period Homes magazine features a story I penned on a home in Buckhead, the upscale neighbor of Atlanta. It started as a teardown, then evolved into a collaboration between architect, landscape architect, builder and client. A+A is pleased to offer this feature article today:

Once home to a 1940s cottage, a two-acre lot on the western edge of the coveted Buckhead neighborhood in Atlanta, Georgia, is now a secluded residential compound.

As is true of neighboring homes, this one is barely visible from the street, in part because of its natural setting and in part because of a ready collaboration between the architect and landscape architect.

“The clients asked me to design a house—they had renovated another home and now wanted something more accustomed to the times,” explains Tim Adams, founding partner at Atlanta’s T.S. Adams Studio, Architects. “We talked about, stylistically, how they lived as a family, to get an understanding for the basis of the design.”

Adams’s landscape architect of choice, Alec Michaelides, is the principal at Atlanta-based Land Plus Associates. He’d worked with this client on two previous projects. The first was 20 years ago, for a home they kept for more than a decade. The second was an existing house where Land Plus helped design and install a pool; they sold the house a few years later.

The clients showed him this lot, which they had located with their architect, Tim Adams. “I sited the house,” Michaelides says. “I went there, a plan in hand for the client, then pushed and pulled with them and Tim, who basically stated: You’re going to make my project better.”

For builder David Childers, principal in Cobb County-based Macallan Custom Homes, the site was no walk in the park. It sloped down and to the left from the street, which called for a reverse-engineering process as he started construction. The clients wanted to be able to meander to the pool from the house, in relative obscurity.

So Childers lined up his priorities from the get-go. “We built the retaining wall first, then the house foundation, then the pool, and then the garage foundation,” he says. “We couldn’t get a lot of heavy equipment past a certain point and had to base our construction management on that.”

Out front, the site is blessed with a knob of 60-year-old beech trees that form a focal point for the property’s entry, along with the addition of the new house and its porte-cochère near the side of the garage. Landscape architect Michaelides gilded the lily by adding a gazebo to the knob.

“You come in off the main road through the driveway gate, then to the porte-cochère as a focal point; the house is to the right and parking is to the left, not in front,” he says. “There’s a sidewalk up to the front door, while the driveway goes around the knob of beeches to the entrance.”

For the driveway, Michaelides used granite cobbles, with exposed aggregate around the garage and loose aggregate in front of and around the knob. “It’s pea gravel,” he says.

The construction is traditional wood framing, with structural steel support where needed. The porch is timber- framed at the roof, with copper flashing slipped between siding and walls. The stonework, matched by its mortar, looks as though it has been on site forever.

For the exterior, the architects and clients spared no expense. It’s clad in cedar shingles, and the roof is Vermont slate. The remaining materials are mostly indigenous—such as Georgia granite for the porte-cochère, foundation, and some details. “Inside, there’s granite in her office and in fireplace surrounds, with wood-paneled walls—all painted except for his walnut study,” Adams says. “We designed the interior architecture, including the millwork, cabinetry, and paneling— that’s typical for our work.”

Inside, Adams called on Michelle Doughtie, owner of Schilling & Co. Interior Design, along with her lead designer and project manager Katelyn Reaves. They came in at the start of the project and worked with the entire team to address the interiors, including fixtures, finishings, and draperies.

Whereas the clients’ former home had been layered in deep reds and browns, here the designers chose fabrics that would give the interiors a softer feel. “We incorporated a lot of family pieces they’d had for a long time, but brought a new look in this new home,” Doughtie says. “It has a fresher and lighter feeling than their previous home.”

She used mostly natural materials—marble countertops, stone floors, antique beams in the family room. “Tim picked out old, rough-sawn beams massive in scale, and recycled,” she adds. “There are wide-plank floors and a lot of texture throughout, like marble for the primary bath and countertop.”

The ceilings may be as tall as 12 feet, but these rooms feel comfortable, cozy, inviting—and, best of all, private. “It’s on a road with neighbors close by, but when you’re in the house you can’t see them,” says Doughtie.

The same goes for activity at the pool, which is neatly tucked away and screened by the landscape design.

For moree, go here.