Nature's neutral takes center stage in eclectic home

From the living room of their West Eleventh Place home, Dillon Kyle and Sam Lasseter survey their surroundings.

Walls without trim, modern. Brick fireplace, traditional. Brick blending to windows, modern. Tall sash windows, Southern and traditional. Furniture, collected and eclectic. Art, contemporary.

And the fantastically green walls: pure Dillon Kyle.

Kyle, owner of Dillon Kyle Architects, doesn't want a label for his home, or even for his work. Though his firm handles a variety of styles, his heart is in architecture's most fundamental form - "vernacular", with each building serving the needs of its occupants, visually appropriate to the site and using accessible materials.

For the home he shares with his husband, Sam Lasseter, the senior philanthropic advisor at Rice University, that meant blending new construction on an empty lot in the city's smallest historic district, now a collection of eight homes on a private street in the Museum District in walking distance of Hermann Park and Rice University.

Kyle spent a year designing the home, then it took another 26 months to plan and build it. They finished the home in the fall of 2014.

Although other homes there were built nearly 100 years ago and were sited in the center of each lot, Kyle and Lasseter placed their home at one end, so a guest house could border the back and create a courtyard effect in the center. The simple exterior, the privacy wall made of locally salvaged brick and the lush landscaping help it look right at home.

"Going through the process of this house made a lot of things clearer to me, in terms of what I really care about as an architect," Kyle said.

Going very green

The home's personality - as well as that of its owners - comes together in its details. The ceiling is continuous throughout the first floor, with no trim, doorways or dividing walls to break it up. If you repainted the ceiling in one room, you'd have to redo it on the entire first floor. (The ceiling color is Farrow & Ball's "Skylight," a shade of blue so pale that it nearly looks white when the rooms are flooded with natural light.)

"When you go from room to room, there are no doors, per se. It's a folding of walls in different directions that creates a widening and narrowing of space; that is a very modern concept," Kyle said.

Regardless of the label, Kyle urges clients to view their homes through a different lens.

"I think we should only be interested in how it feels and what the proportions are and what the space is like," he said. "What the light is like; what the materials are like; what the colors are like."

Which leads us to the bold color he's chosen for walls throughout the first floor of the home: a lovely green that doesn't even have a name. After trying a pile of paint samples, he finally took his two top color contenders, dumped them in a bucket together and declared: "This is it."

Kyle and Lasseter call it "nature's neutral." Though many homes boasting rooms of contemporary and modern art opt for plain white walls, this couple believes green enhances theirs.

"I've always thought of green as being seamless to the outdoors. For me, the green is neutral; to me, it's white," Kyle said.

Throughout the design and construction, plans stumbled here and there, prompting changes to the living room's ceiling and the stairs to the second floor. The first fix meant installing a tall, angled ceiling with a flat spot at its center, giving it a "tenting" effect.

The staircase had its own issues, and the new design - a tight spiral that makes you feel like you're heading into a secret room - is significantly better than the original plan, Kyle and Lasseter agreed.

"Issues that come up in construction are either problems or opportunities, depending on how you want to look at them," Kyle said.

An eclectic mix

Smack in the center of the living room is a distressed-leather-topped coffee table. In an earlier life, it was a tumbling bench. But no matter: Kyle and Lasseter have other uses for it.

"You can put your feet on it, you can put your drink on it, you can stand on it, you can dance on it," Lasseter said. It sits between two midcentury-modern sofas, once covered in white leather but more recently reupholstered in a dark fabric. Standing at the ready are two clever lamps purchased from the Hotel San Jose.

Lasseter, a Tennessee native who moved here 30 years ago, has brought pieces from his home - sturdy dressers that served several generations of his family.

Together they've collected a good deal of furniture and art in their 14 years, either from old-fashioned shopping to firstdibs.com binges and pieces purchased at local arts fundraisers; Kyle is currently on the board of directors of the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston.

Breeze through the kitchen and you'll notice there are no cupboards; Kyle doesn't like them. So drawers - a lighter green to complement the walls - under the stainless-steel-topped counters and around the center island hold their daily necessities.

Cantilevered bookcases hold court in the library, which, incidentally, includes a modest-size TV - the home's only screen. Vintage finds, from small stools to an old sewing machine table they use as a side table, set a casual tone.

The master suite sprawls through the entire second floor, with a bedroom meant to feel like an old-fashioned sleeping porch. A short row of walnut bookcases lines the room, topped with tall sash windows that look out into the treetops.

A vibrant life

With 2,796 square feet and only one bedroom in the main building, the couple acknowledges it's an eccentric house.

Aesthetics sometimes outweigh practicality, Kyle said, but the home is both beautiful and functional. Rooms flow easily from one to another, and each has a spectacular view of the work of these two avid gardeners. Out one window you'll see palm trees; another offers a view to camellias and shrubby perennials. Outside the kitchen window is a vegetable garden, and sweet peas have just sprouted at the base of their trellis.

The backyard includes their requisite swimming pool, but this oval dip of cool water is lined - around its perimeter as well as its bottom - with the salvaged brick that appears in details such as small porches, a privacy wall and walkways.

A 640-square-foot guest house allows privacy for visiting friends and family. Another reason for this separate space is that the men want the main house to feel vibrant and needed.

"I don't necessarily want an empty bedroom in the house," Kyle said. "If a room isn't being used, it feels lonely."

Lasseter chimed in: "We use all of this house. All of it."