Home of the Month, a collaboration with the College of Design, shows possibilities in constructing a living space that's well thought-out and built with the homeowners' living patterns and preferences in mind.

Each month we'll profile a new Home of the Month, selected from 27 designs by area architects. The goal: to inspire and offer knowledge that can be applied to any home's design.

Maybe the Leinbach Residence, designed by Raleigh architect Tina Govan in Durham's Solterra passive solar co-housing community, will help put to rest a false dichotomy that has plagued the architectural community, the real estate business and public opinion for some time now: that a house is either "contemporary" or "traditional."

"Contemporary" is usually defined as having simple and straightforward forms, lots of glass and natural light, strong connections between inside and outside, and flowing and interconnected spaces. Traditional is what we would call the structure that looks like what we expect a "house" to look like.

Now, look at the Leinbach Residence. Into which box does it fit?

Fitting the house into one or the other category is difficult largely because neither the architect nor her clients were willing to accept such simplistic distinctions as alternatives that would exclude each other. But what is perhaps most admirable about Govan's Leinbach Residence, built for a retired couple with a tight budget and a tight space, is that it inverts what we see in so much typical and conventional residential design today. The pretentious, image- and status-conscious external appearances with very ordinary, dull and predictable arrangements of interior rooms is replaced with a house with a modest demeanor that does not dazzle you from the outside, but upon entering, embraces you with a luminous warmth, offering lots of surprises and simple delights.

The Leinbach Residence is a house that is true to our North Carolina motto: "Esse quam videri" -- to be rather than to seem!

The concept

Step inside and find transparent and interconnected spaces made possible by screens, look-through bookcases and sliding doors that stay open most of the time. It's hard to believe that the ground floor is under 1,400 square feet. The compact floor plan is efficient and energy-conscious.

"An open plan with long diagonal views, plenty of windows and hallways that end in views out, make the house feel bigger than it is," architect Tina Govan said. "Shortened walls, storage cabinets and sliding panels softly define boundaries between rooms, creating flexible degrees of privacy and openness. Such permeable boundaries allow the sharing of space and views, making public spaces feel bigger and private ones less confined." This provides cheap additional square footage and nearly doubles the living area, illustrating that you can achieve a sense of openness and generosity within tight constraints of size and budget.

Asian influences

Because the homeowners had lived in Japan at one time, they wanted some Japanese features in their home. Govan was very familiar with the lightness, transparency, modularity and flexibility of traditional Japanese houses. (She had worked in Japan for two years.)

Features such as shoji screens, a tatami room and a gravel garden were customized to improve the homeowners' everyday living experiences. The tatami room, the place for yoga and meditation, for example, is upstairs, away from the living spaces. The window placement in the space is very critical. "When you are on the tatami mat, you are sitting on the floor. We had to place the window so that you had a direct view out, capturing the trees, but not low enough so that you see the cars passing outside on the road."

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