Opportunity literally knocked at the door for St. Louis couple Bradley Fratello and Doug Moore. While admiring their dwelling in The Grove from the street, a stranger walked up to their front door and offered to buy it for a generous price well above what they had spent building it. Quickly seizing the moment, they accepted the offer and moved into a condo in the Central West End. After a couple of years, they still craved city life but preferred to have more land with a seamless indoor/outdoor connection. They found a large property on an eclectic block in Tower Grove East, which they divided into two lots. They built their current home on one lot, the site of a former stable that caught fire and burned down in 2012, and later sold the other.
“We have a long relationship with architect Sarah Gibson, co-founder of UIC, who designed our previous custom home in the Grove,” says Fratello. “We knew very quickly after meeting with Sarah and her husband, Brent Crittenden, architect and co-founder of UIC, that we had a similar eye toward contextually inspired modernist design. Doug and I both share UIC’s ‘less is more’ approach to clean design and efficient use of space, and we also share a deep investment in reimaging St. Louis for the 21st century.”
Completed in 2018, their single-level, two-bedroom, two-bath home encompasses nearly 1,750 square feet. Still having ample lot width, UIC built the house tight to one side, leaving plenty of yard space on the other. “From the street, the home complies with a dense urban neighborhood,” says Gibson, design principal at UIC. “The front façade aligns with the historic homes on the block, with a front porch and formal landscaping that holds the street edge. However, crossing the threshold from the street into the house proper, the dwelling takes on mid-century principles with soaring rooflines, open concept spaces, vaulted ceilings and a seamless indoor/ outdoor connection in almost every room.”
The couple’s new home began as a riff on one of UIC’s standard models called the “Flounder,” named for their asymmetric, sloped façades and entries on the side. Dating back to the late 1700s, this architectural design style appeared in colonial cities throughout the Mississippi Valley. The UIC “Flounder” has a smaller footprint and two bedrooms toward the front of the house. Its living spaces open toward the back. Since the couple had a double lot, they widened the house and its side overhang, creating a covered patio. They shifted one of the bedrooms to the back of the home and situated the living spaces in the middle to open to the side, where they built a pool, a rock garden and a raised-bed vegetable garden.
“At first glance, our home appears to be an homage to the low-sloped roofs of mid-century ranch homes more typically found in Crestwood and Sunset Hills,” notes Fratello, “and that reference is fully intentional. Combined with UIC’s ‘Flounder’ design, we hope to have paid a double homage to St. Louis’s architectural heritage.” The dwelling’s simplistic and light-filled design also delivers a well-grounded aesthetic.
Outside, light gray Hardie board siding in three shades transitions from darkest to lightest as it ascends the façade. Inside, the color palette is a range of warm grays on the walls, wide-plank LVT flooring, and concrete. The open-concept living/dining space brings in a range of greens in an overdyed oriental rug, a forest green velvet sofa and a few accessories in the kitchen, including a Fiestaware teapot—a gift to the couple from friends who moved to Mexico. Deep earth tones anchor the living space with a pair of dark chocolate Barcelona chairs and a dark-stained Noguchi-inspired coffee table.
“We knew from our first experience that Brad and Doug were creative and fun to work with,” says Gibson. “Expressing a desire to maintain an urban aesthetic yet push the boundaries architecturally, they turned to us to solve their ideal of creating a reasonably priced urban retreat through design. The interior design direction shared between us was more of an agreement around architectural principles than taste.”
Building and landscape worked together to create privacy, with the home as close as possible to one side of the lot and the adjacent house, leaving space for Brad’s garden, a pool and a hot tub. A screen element forms the front porch and extends around the perimeter of the yard, melding the house with the outdoor space architecturally. “The outside is designed with a purpose,” adds Moore. “It’s not a yard with a pool—it’s an outdoor room with a pool as the centerpiece. It’s a spa, an outdoor dining room, an entertainment space, a retreat from the noise of life and an urban oasis. We are thankful every day that we have created this special place.”
UIC shaped the spaces around the couple’s lifestyle and art collection with dynamic architectural features. A massive wall of sliding glass doors facing the pool became a central element. The ‘disappearing’ wall and a suspended fireplace create the heart of the indoor and outdoor living spaces. “Together, they generate a visual axis of water, fire, and light that create an indoor/outdoor connection,” says Fratello. “Further linking inside and outside is the kitchen backsplash—a horizontally-laid Moroccan hourglass tile in a muted earth tone with an undulating, crackled surface evoking the water in the pool just a few feet away. In the evening, ripples on the surface of the pool reflect on the living room ceiling, a soft motion that activates the geometry of the space.”
The design of this project primarily focuses on great flow and functionality. Due to the limited square footage, every inch of the home and the yard was crucial. “There is very little circulation space,” notes Gibson, “and what little there is does double duty as the foyer, storage or mudroom. Similarly, the outdoor spaces are programmed with careful detail.” The front yard flourishes with native perennials, lending a Midwestern prairie garden vibe. The small exterior also encompasses the pool, a patio, a garden with a processing area and a carport.
“For me, I get to reap the benefits of trusting Brad’s vision and Sarah’s ability to turn that into a reality,” Moore notes. “We wanted a home that integrates the outdoors as much as possible and having the pool positioned for view and access from both the living room and the primary bedroom masterfully achieves that.”
“In the summer, we love sitting outside after dark and looking at our slice of the sky framed by the long parallel lines of our home’s patio overhang and our neighbor’s equally modernist home,” adds Fratello. “Floating in the pool while the clouds track by is magical.”
