Feature > A Collaboration That Sings
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By John Clayton | Photography by Michael Rixon
As the first building completed on a riverside estate, a guesthouse sets the tone for design and talent.
When Karen and David Della Penta were choosing a name for their aboutto- be-built home, they drew upon the romantic memories of their honeymoon in Italy and decided to call the property Villa Como. The stylish little outbuilding that was the first of several structures to be built on the property was the guesthouse.
They could have called the guesthouse prototipo.
That’s Italian for “prototype,” which is what their guesthouse ultimately became as they spent three years developing their tweve-and-a-half-acre property on the banks of a Seacoast river.
“Since the guesthouse was the first structure that we actually built on the site,” says architect Scott Fiorentino, founder and owner of Fiorentino Group Architects in York, Maine, “and because we were using many of the same materials on the main house, we could experiment with some of the elements we were going to use later on. Seeing them on a smaller scale helped tremendously.”
The resulting 1,100-square-foot guesthouse—complete with two bedrooms; two baths; a galley kitchen; an expansive, living room space with a vaulted ceiling; and a 1,500-square-foot, three-car, lower-level garage with a potting area and a mechanical room, all contained within a rugged, earthy stone-and-shingle exterior—provides what Fiorentino calls “grand scale in a small space.”
“It’s a small footprint,” he added, “but it feels big.”
That’s precisely what the Della Pentas were looking for. “We tried to come up with tag for it—something like Shingle-style meets Frank Lloyd Wright—but we never found the right term for it,” Karen explains. “We wanted it to be like a lake house—it’s on water, but it’s not a beach house or a coastal house—so a lake house it was going to be.”
Building Relationships
The rapport among the main players on this project—the Della Pentas, Fiorentino, general contractor Chris Ragusa from C.M. Ragusa Builders in Brentwood and interior designer Michael Cebula from Cebula Design in Newburyport, Massachusetts— was the stuff of dreams, according to all parties.
“The most important thing was the collaboration,” Ragusa says. “The owners really stressed that, and with the hundreds of people who worked on the project, it was special.”
As was the unfolding dynamic. “At first, we had designed the main house,“ Fiorentino says, “but the Della Pentas have lots of family and friends who visit them often, so they thought it would be good to have a guesthouse. They had very specific ideas about what they wanted it to be—where the main house is more formal, they wanted a rustic but sophisticated feel. So there are consistencies but dramatic differences.”
Still, the design process was remarkably fluid. “I guess we did it inside out,” Karen laughs. “We sat with Scott and started telling him the things we wanted in the guesthouse, and he just said, ‘Why don’t we start laying out the rooms and we’ll build a house on top of it.’”
All the while, clients and architect were building a relationship, too. “For one thing, the Della Pentas were looking for an architectural firm where the actual principal was going to stay totally involved in the project,” Fiorentino says. “On an undertaking of this scale, they wanted to have one person responsible for the whole project, and since I had just started my firm at that time, I could offer that to them.
“I had worked on ten homes not quite as big as their main house, and I always start off with hand sketches. The hand sketches are informal, they’re not to scale, but clients can feel really comfortable with them. They can see themselves in the sketch. I do include furniture and some details, but they’re loose enough so [clients] feel like they can still make changes as opposed to hard sketches on a computer, which can discourage [clients] from making those changes.
“I promote their input,” Fiorentino continues, “because my job is to create a design that works for their needs. And in this schematic phase, it’s like a piece of clay and we’re just starting to mold it. When [clients] say, ‘Hey, we love this plan,’ I start adding things like ceiling heights. With the guesthouse, we were trying to fit the structure into a small space.”
The Entry Point
In spite of its small space, the guesthouse serves as an important entry point for the entire Della Penta compound. “It’s not necessarily the aesthetic gateway to the property, but we decided it would be the gateway for infrastructure to the property,” says Ragusa, who, like Fiorentino, pledged 100-percent immersion in the project. “David Della Penta is a savvy technical guy, and he really stressed to me that infrastructure was a key to the project. Rather than an afterthought, he wanted it well thought out in advance. “Now, all of the utilities—gas, electric, cable, even the Internet service—run into the guesthouse and branch off underground from there into the main house, with a generator in a separate building near the guesthouse to power the whole complex when needed.”
Complexity and Simplicity
There is complexity and simplicity to the exterior of the guesthouse. The rugged simplicity can be found in the sturdy gray-stone-and-blue-shingle façade that welcomes visitors, and the complexity is in the exterior brackets and millwork— all hand-fashioned in Ragusa’s shop—and in the intricate network of pergolas that perch protectively above the outdoor patios.
That combination of complexity and simplicity also is evident inside the guesthouse.
“For things to work the way the Della Pentas wanted it, the guesthouse had to have two independent levels,” Fiorentino says. “The upper level was to be the living space for the guests, but the lower level was to serve as garage storage space for three of David Della Penta’s imported sports cars.
“The tricky part is that [the Della Pentas] wanted to be able to have access to that lower space even when there were guests in the house and to maintain the privacy of their guests—and at the same time, not allow access from the living space to the lower garage level.”
When those logistical problems had been addressed and the exterior framing had begun, the interior—as envisioned by the Della Pentas, complete with cathedral ceilings and a fieldstone fireplace fashioned of local stone—began to take shape.
Design that Sings
That is where the tight collaboration came into play again. “I’ve worked with Michael Cebula since the early ‘90s,” Fiorentino says. “Once we create the space, we need someone like Michael who can tell us what the colors should be, what the fabrics should be and what design elements can really bring character to the space.
“When you look at the bedrooms, for example, they are exactly the same size, but they look completely different, simply because Michael is such a genius with color. In fact, I can look at something he’s done and say to myself, ‘That’s not the color I might have chosen,’ and by the time the project is over, I’m trying to figure out how to use that color in my own home.”
Cebula’s modest response?
“Karen and David wanted it to feel like a fishing shack,” he said, “and she wanted blue to echo throughout, so we used blue and summery colors and fishing motifs to make it feel rustic and wonderful at the same time. I think it came together very well.”
Fiorentino might even describe it as harmonious. “The way I look at interior design is that we create the lyrics, but the designer adds the color and feeling—and that’s the melody,” he explains. “For me, that’s always the measure of the success of a project when you’re working with a designer. Does it sing? With Michael, it always sings, and to me, this guesthouse sings.”
And the Della Pentas happily sing the praises of the entire riverside property that was completed in August 2008.
“It’s private,” Karen says, “but not so secluded we don’t have neighbors. We have wild turkeys in the yard, and there’s a nesting pair of bald eagles that we get to see a mile down the river. There’s boat traffic on the river, and the people always greet us with a wave. In our eyes, it’s the perfect place in New Hampshire.”
With a perfect guesthouse—at Villa Como—to match.
