Springhouse Architects

What do you do with a wish list that includes a home gym, a music studio, a detached in-law suite, and guest space in the pool house — without the house feeling like four different buildings stapled together?

That's the brief on the Moore Residence, a new home we're designing for Mike & Grace Moore on Lot 99 in Milford, working alongside builder Chris Gorman Homes. Two stories, a finished basement, a four-car garage, a first-floor primary suite, three more bedrooms upstairs — all wrapped in a warm, modern-traditional style with outdoor living built in, not added on. Construction Documents were issued for permit this spring, and the project is now moving through construction.

A big program doesn't have to feel big. It has to be organized well. Planning a home with a long wish list of your own? Start the conversation — link in bio.

Six months ago, the Moore Residence was a Construction Documents set headed to the building department. Today it's underway on Lot 99 in Milford with Chris Gorman Homes.

That gap — permit to progress — is where a design either holds up or doesn't. Every detail we drew has to survive contact with an actual job site. So far, it's holding.

A pool house isn't just a pool house when it's also where your guests sleep.

On the Moore Residence, the detached in-law suite and pool house both had to work double duty — private, comfortable, and connected to the main house without feeling like an afterthought bolted onto the backyard. That's the kind of program most builders would simplify away. We drew it in on purpose.

Quick test: will your kitchen still look right in fifteen years, or is it chasing a trend that's already halfway out the door?

Springfield Modern's kitchen is built for timeless — a run of white cabinetry, a hand-set gray mosaic tile backsplash running floor to hood, and a dark wood island long enough for three stools and a crowd. Nothing trend-driven. Everything built to last.

That's the standard we design to on every project.

Most staircases are an afterthought. This one wasn't.

In Springfield Modern, it floats off a stacked stone wall three stories tall — small square windows cut directly into the stone light each landing as you climb. No drywall return, no trim to hide behind. Just cable rail, dark oak treads, and raw stone doing the work of a hundred square feet of finish.

This is the kind of detail you only get when your architect draws the stair before the framer ever touches the wall.

Ever driven through a new subdivision and realized you'd already seen every house on the street? That's exactly what the owners of Springfield Modern didn't want.

They had open pasture and a wide-open western sky — the kind of site most builders turn into a generic two-story with a porch bolted on. We did the opposite: a stucco-and-stone volume with a curved glass bay that pulls the fields straight into the living room. Inside, a staircase floats off a full-height stone wall like it's daring gravity to try something.

This is what happens when a house is drawn around its site instead of dropped onto it. Swipe through — the twilight shot is the one our whole team still stops scrolling for.

Want a home that actually looks like where you live, instead of the subdivision next door? Start the conversation — link in bio.

A hinge only works if it can hold two things together and let them move apart.

That's the whole idea behind the glass box at the center of Hinge House. It's not a hallway. It's not a mudroom. It's the mechanism that lets the front-facing part of the home and the rear, where the lot falls away, work as two distinct experiences of the same house.

📍 Hinge House | Radian Custom Homes

Hinge House is built on a lot that drops away dramatically — the kind of site most people build around instead of building with.

We didn't hide from the slope. We built a glass box at the center of the house that holds everything together, and then split it open. The front door is the hinge — literally, the point where the house opens from the entry side to the rear.

This is one of my favorite Springhouse designs, and one of the ones you'll see the least of. Our client asked for privacy, and we're honoring that. What you don't see is part of what makes this one special.

📍 Hinge House | Radian Custom Homes

A homeowner walked their own foundation site and noticed something missing — no rebar in the formwork, even though it was called out in the approved drawings and the signed specifications.⁠
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The builder's explanation: it was over-engineered, not necessary. But that's not the builder's call to make once a permit's been issued. It's one of the clearest red flags there is.⁠
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New on Field Notes this week — what that actually means, and what to do about it.⁠
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