Modern Design

In A Traditional Setting

Images by Patrick W. King

When you design outdoor spaces for a group of power brokers that include Empress Farah Pahlavi, Patrick Ewing, and Senator Tom Harkin you need to show up with the green and it must rock. If you’re Richard Arentz of Arentz Landscape Architects with offices in Virginia and the District, this isn’t an issue. Before going solo, our local demigod of exterior space honed his chops at EDAW, a major, world-class player in all that grows. “They sent me all over the world,” says Arentz, “from an island off the coast of Tunisia to looking at sod roofs in Iceland.”

The global immersion brought Arentz up to speed on what was happening in the field of landscape architecture on a planetary scale. He brings this sensibility to him on the job site everyday and also in a little side project that came to fruition in 2005 – building his own house in Warrenton, Virginia. “It was a collaboration between myself, the architect Richard Williams and Jose Solis of Solis Betancourt,” says Arentz, “the house represents what we’re trying to do in our practice which is have the entire environment, inside and out, raised to the same level.”

Landscape architects can be brought into a house project by an architect or a homeowner, which is typically how Arentz starts a job. Figuring out how and where a house will sit on a piece of land, or “siting” is a key function. Arentz says, “you take fairly basic information like what are the key rooms and when are you going to be sitting in them and go from there.”

“We used a tall, attenuated, vernacular form of Virginia architecture and covered the exterior with stucco,” says Arentz. A wall of locally found stone known as “elk river” ties together the two separate structures of the guest house and the main house. “We wanted a village of buildings,” says Arentz, “it provides an opportunity to create outdoor space.” The outdoor spaces includes a courtyard with fountain, a swimming pool and a screened-in porch that becomes the summer living room.

The same stone was also used inside the house in the form of a massive fireplace that ties the interior and exterior together. A water feature near the front door softens up all the rock while relating to the nearby views of the Rappahannock River.

The house, thus christened “Running Cedar,” features an outdoor element that you might not expect from a man who defines his work with carefully selected plants – in this case, two vast expanses of lawn. “I use the lawn as a foil that’s juxtaposed with a massive amount of native plants,” he says. The indigenous greenery was preserved wherever possible and becomes part of the overall feel of the property. “It was a completely wooded site, so when I was doing the siting I started off by cutting small, individual branches to frame the views I wanted,” he says.

Arentz likes to use simple hedges as borders and lines of perennials as architectural elements to define the outdoor space. The walkway out the back door leads to a garden and is lined by an alley of Winter King Hawthorn’s which produces red berries during the winter for the birds and white flowers in spring for him.

Arentz is currently applying some of his own inner musings on a commercial hospitality project for Starwood Hotel and Resorts know as 1 Hotel and Residences. It’ll be DC’s first green hotel, says Arentz, “it’s eleven stories, LEED certified, about 300 rooms located right near the Ritz Carlton.” The design phase is already underway with similar projects slated for Seattle, Scottsdale, and New York.

In the meantime Arentz splits his time between his two locations and is planning an office addition for Running Cedar. He’s also been running “Ironwood,” a design-build firm that installs all his own creations and carefully selected projects of others. Being talented and in high demand is all well and good but the results are the big payoff for Arentz. “There’s a level of satisfaction that comes from a client who talks about how an outdoor space has changed the way they live,” he says, “that is a very gratifying thing.”

When rethinking an outdoor space it’s good to plan ahead for natural occurrences like droughts. Arentz says, “make intelligent decisions about picking the plants with regard to water usage. I tend to work with a lot of native plants.”

If you’re doing new construction consider using groundwater as a heat and cooling source. “Geo-thermal based HVAC systems have become much more cost efficient,” says Arentz, “most of my new projects are using them.”

And when it comes to joining the home’s exterior and interior spaces Arentz says, “set a theme and repeat it to create an overall environment.”



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