Home tour to help Habitat for Humanity Architects to show off achievements
Arizona Daily Star
Tucson, Arizona | Published: 10.01.2006
By Mae Lee Sun
Special to the Arizona Daily Star
When Sonya Sotinsky and her husband, Miguel Fuentevilla, owners of FORSarchitecture + Interiors, moved into a 1928, red-brick bungalow in the Sam Hughes neighborhood, there was no question that major remodeling was needed.
Not just because they are modernist architects, but because they felt the quaint, 1,200-square-foot house wasn’t functional for their modern family of four.
The kitchen and dining room were confined to an 8-by-9-foot space off a slightly bigger living room. Oak flooring throughout the house needed refinishing, and the dusty yard didn’t leave much of a view.
The couple replaced bearing walls with steel I-beams and added 14-foot sliding-glass doors that enter into a courtyard landscaped with blue agaves. The result: The house feels more open.
The Sotinsky-Fuentevilla residence is one of seven houses that can be seen next Sunday during a home tour sponsored by the Southern Arizona Chapter of the American Institute of Architects.
Open to ticket-holders only, the self-guided tour will feature residential projects that have undergone major renovations or remodeling by Tucson architects. Proceeds will benefit the Tucson affiliate of Habitat for Humanity, a nonprofit organization that works to create affordable homeownership for low-income families.
The Sotinsky-Fuentevilla renovation, which took two years, also included exposing old masonry and restoring the vintage oak floors. The kitchen was moved, and it now opens out to the living room, spaced by a custom-made island of fir and Brazilian slate. Three stainless-steel dishwashers have taken the place of cabinets to keep things neat and more efficient.
“Thinking how to use what you have in terms of space to organize things is fun,” Fuentevilla says. “Plus, I admit to being a neat freak. “By the time you take dishes out of the dusty cabinets, rinse them and then wash them again after use, three dishwashers made sense,” he continued. “It’s not revolutionary in terms of design, because we’re still only running one per day. Plus our daughter can reach them by herself.”
With the remodeling complete, the couple spend more time at home and entertaining.
A second home on the tour, owned by two University of Arizona professors, highlights the work of architect Bil Taylor. His firm, Taylor Design + Build, which handles high-end residential design and is also the general contractor, has taken a 1950s slump-block ranch-style home and transformed it into an elegant, Zenlike retreat complete with locally crafted Japanese shoji doors.
“It had good bones to start with,” Taylor said. “Lots of wood and glass, plus tall ceilings. Once the paint was sandblasted off the ceilings and the fir beams were exposed, the space really opened up.”
In addition to achieving openness, Taylor felt another major accomplishment of the project was moving the kitchen out of the center of the house and transforming the carport into a “sensible” entryway for receiving guests, saying they’ll now get an inviting view of the fireplace when they walk in instead of seeing the back wall of the kitchen.
Other homes on the tour include work by architects Chuck Albanese, Rob Paulus, Rick Bright and Ed Marley.
● Mae Lee Sun is a local freelance writer.
Sonya Sotinsky and Miguel Fuentevilla’s home is one of seven to be featured on the Architecture Home Tour.
If you go:
The American Institute of Architects, Southern Arizona Chapter, 14th Annual Architecture Home Tour
When: 10 a.m.-4 p.m. next Sunday
What: Tour seven homes restored or remodeled by local architects.
How much: $20; proceeds benefit Habitat for Humanity of Tucson
To find out where to buy tickets or for more information, call 323-2191 or go online to www.aia-arizona.org/sacaia.
Tags: tucson
development | maeleesun | 
October 1, 2006 9:21 am
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