Look inside this unique Charleston home after its artistic, modern makeover

The dramatic makeover at 116 Grove St. began more as an artistic statement than a conventional remodeling.

For decades, this Charleston address previously had a single-story cinderblock duplex so unremarkable, few noticed it.

The owners, Karen Baldwin and her partner, hired architect Kevan Hoertdoerfer and gave him a blank canvas, a chance to lead a highly creative process that would challenge other local artisans and eventually involve repeated trips to a Goose Creek scrap yard.

Its walls were re-enforced and raised, and everything else was reshaped into something most passersby absolutely notice, beginning with its twisting, sculptural roof covered with diamond steel panels.

The design team involved Baldwin as an interior designer but also landscape architect Robert Maerlender, painter Tess Thomas, metal worker Eric Doran and woodworker Spiro Skartsiounis.

"There are a lot of craftsman in Charleston that don't get to express their talent enough," Hoertdoefer says.

For some, this was their big chance, and what they created was far from a single house, but certainly a singular one.

'Roll the dice'

The owners and Hoertdoefer and other craftsman signed on to a very collaborative process. Their guiding philosophy is more or less summed up by the first line of a Charles Bukowski poem stenciled next to the front door.

"roll the dice," it says. "if you're going to try ... go all the way."

The Wagener Terrace neighborhood lies outside the purview of Charleston's Board of Architectural Review, which often frowns on "going all the way."

While the project has a host of creative details, the most obvious is its roof form, probably as close a thing to a Frank Gehry work that Charleston has seen.

"We wanted to make it sculptural," Hoertdoerfer says. "There is subtlety throughout. The roof form is a strong form, but one that captures early morning light and shades most afternoon and evening light."

The closer one looks, the more unique creativity can be found, beginning with an angled slatted wood fence, designed to create a blended public-private feel and provide maximum screening of the front window, behind which the dining table sits.

"There is this whole play with public-private with Charleston single homes," Hoertdoerfer says. "How do you create a semi-private garden but not so private that you're fencing it off from your neighbors?"

The small yard is designed by Maerlender with artificial turf and stone, flanked by bamboo and done to create an interesting image as seen from the deck above.

A peek inside

As dramatic as the facade is, the interior is striking, too — simple and vast, divided really into four rooms (not including bathrooms and closet spaces).

A main room takes up most of the first floor, and the second includes only a small loft space that leaves most of the first floor with a dramatic ceiling height.

That volume is accented mainly by a set of stair treads, with no backing or railing, jutting out from the wall. Thomas painted the treads, and part of the second floor, with a palette of soft colors in the spirit of artist Richard Diebenkorn. (One of his works is named "116," same as this house's address).

The furnishings are striking, including a section of an airplane and a huge metal panel both found at the scrap yard; a conveyer belt curved to support a glass table top; and a segment of construction crane used as a table base. A Roy McMakin table and four chairs stands as a sculptural element that owners look at but don't sit around.

The interior leads to the backyard, which is dominated by a modern shelter structure built with stucco over plywood. The shelter's clean circular openings were created with PVC pipe, and the stone path to the shelter is created with oval cutouts from bathroom countertops.

Still, the house maintains at least some semblance of tradition. It has "Northside manners," a Charleston concept in which a single house has either very small or no windows on its north (or east) facade, the facade that faces their neighbor's piazza.

There's no side piazza here, but the window openings on the east and west were enlarged by Resolite panels: a translucent, white fiberglass that lets light into the house but blocks any views to or from the neighboring homes on both sides.

While the house drew a mix of confusion and skepticism while going up — and while its striking design is never going to sit well with some in this traditional city — the owners say it has drawn a number of admirers, too.

A few doors down, Hoertdoerfer has been hired to design two new houses, currently under construction for different owners but in a similar stylistic vein.

For a city where architectural conservatism mostly rules the day — and collaboration most always means winning over a city review board, neighbors and preservation groups — Grove Street is becoming a place where a very different kind of collaboration can take root.

The public's response to this uniqueness will determine if and when the soil there might change.