Artisans Group Architecture + Planning

Oct 2019

The Artisan’s Group designed and built us our dream home. Tessa understood our vision and was able to design us a modern home that catered exactly to our lifestyle. Their quality of build and attention to detail was exceptional. Their staff were always professional, knowledgeable and friendly. We wouldn’t change a thing to our house!

Sep 2019

In 2010, as I was approaching sixty years of age, I found an amazing old (and run-down) homestead site near the southern tip of Puget Sound, and began imagining a house and studio. I’ve been a designer and fabricator of furniture and sculpture for over forty-five years, so it wasn’t difficult to start developing ideas. As I dreamed I began looking around for assistance with the process, and found Artisans Group. I didn’t go to Artisans Group looking for an industry-leading eco-home. I came because I saw a couple of their projects and loved the clean modern style Tessa Smith and Randy Foster were putting together. They were realizing designs that seemed to me to be far beyond what other design/build groups were creating. Architecture has been a fascination most of my life, and what I saw in the lines and volumes Tessa was producing was a natural feel for proportions, for minimal and unique details, for the flow of life patterns in a home, and particularly for the play of light, natural and artificial, as it enhances and defines spaces and the experience of living. With Tessa and Artisans I got all of that plus a great experience of collaboration in design, and a house that always surprises me—because it is somehow more “me” than I would have designed by myself. It’s a “world house,” designed with details and technological solutions that are distinctly European and soundly ecological in a way that just makes sense. The house stays at comfortable temperatures with the air always fresh while using a tenth of the energy of my last house. The biggest surprise was when I moved in and found the experience to be more physically comfortable than I would have—or could have—imagined. The house seems to have its own body temperature, and wears like a glove. The Jewel Box (as we nick-named it during the design process) was designed to be a home and gallery. It has become a museum of my life’s work and remains so comfortable and inspiring that I stay home wondering why I would want to be anywhere else. Artisans did it right, and I moved in a month before that sixtieth birthday. Over eight years later I’m still daily grateful that I get to live here. I love this place.