Housing new dreams

opper-sheathed exterior walls. Translucent polycarbonate room dividers. Exposed steel support beams and anchoring weights.

Any one of these elements would attract notice. Combined in a single residence, they are striking, to say the least. Noted architect Travis Price lives with them and many other unusual features in his home on a sloping, leafy site in Northwest Washington.

Since the 2004 completion of this unusual building in an otherwise conventional neighborhood, he has worked with several clients who have embraced his designs and the ideas behind them. Doing so means living with a certain degree of novelty in their surroundings and, at least in one case, hazarding skepticism or worse from neighbors seemingly resistant to change.

A heavy reliance on glass and metal isn’t new where modern domestic architecture is concerned, at least not in an era of exposed ducts, stainless steel kitchens, and skylights. But what about Polygal and Kalwall — two fossil-fuel products more often associated with industrial buildings than with modern interiors?

An opaque luminescent plastic, the polycarbonate known best by the trade name Polygal at first glance wouldn’t seem a likely candidate for the home, even if a person can adjust to the sight of patinated — artificially weathered — copper on exterior walls. Another adaptable opaque product is Kalwall, a reinforced fiberglass material. (Think walkways and canopies.)

Mr. Price champions both for aesthetic and practical reasons when used in the right place, finding them cheaper than glass and just as permanent while offering privacy and insulation.

“We live in a modern world, and we love metal — the reason being that we worship cars more than homes. It saves labor to work out of industrial materials, and the two largest ones in your face are glass and steel,” Mr. Price says, pointing out “how little time people spend in their houses compared to their cars. … Who eats lunch at home anymore?”

He laments that, in his view, most suburban houses are “labor-intensive facsimiles of the past” when the real choices for materials “ought to be what takes the least labor and has the least environmental impact to give you the longest life.”

Mr. Price is an adjunct professor and director of the graduate program in Cultural Studies and Sacred Space at Catholic University and the author most recently of an illustrated concept book titled “The Archaeology of Tomorrow.” Abstract terms are one thing — he is fond of words such as “authenticity,” “harmony” and “spirit of place” as applied to architectural innovation. Living with an original design is another matter, one he calls “adapting to the strange.”

The strangeness of patinas, for example — the greenish-brown color of a copper surface caused by oxidation — he regards as lovable as stucco, columns and brick. Besides, he notes, bricks are costly to buy and labor-intensive to boot. Copper, which is known to reduce the conductivity of heat and light, can turn green naturally but unevenly in six to eight years or can be treated with a spray that begins the process after six hours.

A man of charm and conviction who names his chief inspiration as “somewhere between the Greeks and Gaudi,” Mr. Price was aware that copper was historically “only reserved for gutters and pipes and was hard to get” and isn’t a metal that people normally respond to emotionally. But context and smart design is all. “There is immense subtlety in metal once you get used to it,” he says.

The residence of Julia Slavin and John Arnholz in Chevy Chase in the District is a case in point. Its front is a bit of a tease with a throwback look to a traditional 1950s brick cottage, complete with decorative picket fence. Inside, striking modern elements include steel-and-glass floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking Rock Creek Park and a stairwell paneled with strong translucent Kalwall resembling Japanese rice paper.

“It is so beautiful to see what happens throughout the day. It is constantly changing,” says Ms. Slavin. A writer who works from home, she says she “kept a close eye on the materials that were going to be used.”

The rear of the house is a cubical structure stretching up four floors, with the vertical thrust mirroring trees on the property and allowing for an abundance of natural light. The sloping terrain adds another dramatic dimension. Copper tubing rather than wood is used for fencing. Outdoor decks are made of Trex, a commercial material composed of recycled trash bags.

There were some complaints that the family was altering the character of the neighborhood with their unusual take on modernity.

“Anyone who does renovation becomes the neighborhood whipping boy,” Ms. Slavin says philosophically. “But are we going to keep doing the same center-hall Colonial house over and over, or are we going to start using green materials, bring the outside into the interior and move architecture along?”

Similarly, a less dramatic three-story addition with glass and copper on one side was added to the back of the modest brownish-gray brick home owned by David Hollinger and Dawn Martin in Glover Park. Neighbors in this case were “very understanding and supportive,” Mr. Hollinger says. The couple, who needed more space for entertaining, have an unusually deep garden marked off by a coppered wall and copper tubing that Mr. Hollinger sees as “grace notes that define the space but keep it open.”

Another client won over by Mr. Price’s imagination was Terry Lenzner, who says, “If we were going to build a house, I wanted it to be creative and not a standard Cleveland Park house where we had lived for 25 years.”

The front profile of the Lenzner family’s patinated copper-sheathed home on their new quarter-acre plot is like two hands cradling a piece of sculpture. (Mr. Lenzner’s sculpture collection is reflected in water canals in the back.)

“I didn’t decide solely on copper, but seen from the idea of cost and maintenance, it was convincing,” he notes.

Buying the material on the commodities futures market well ahead of time saved about $30,000.

Unifying wood, stone and glass elements (“fire, water, earth, air,” Mr. Price says) throughout contribute to what Mr. Lenzner calls “heavy Asian influences.” The overall effect “expresses our personality and our way of life,” says Mr. Lenzner, who adds, however, that “it still is a mystery how it will be to live inside it.” The family expects to move in this October.