“This is not a ‘Hi honey, I’m home!’ house,”
artist Annie Dunsky-Kälnitz says of her Pittsford residence. Pod-shaped and
perched on 100-foot pylons on the side of a hill — like a long-legged bug —
the house was dubbed the Floating House by its first owners. It was designed
and built in the late 1970s by architect Jim Johnson, of Mushroom House fame.
The house is oriented away from the
street and towards a lush tangle of woods to create privacy and foster an
intimacy with nature. On the eastern side, a three-story bank of windows
overlooks the trees and creek below. At the western side, facing the street, a
blank, 80-foot-long, cedar-shingle wall maintains the private feeling of the
home.
The land surrounding the house is,
like the house, atypical. There’s no lawn, nor is there any level ground to
speak of — just a steep hill. To get to the backyard you have to walk down
dozens of steps. At the bottom, the Floating House looms above the scrub bushes
that lead to the creek and woods.
“This is a retreat,” Annie says.
She’s seen wild turkeys, deer, and great blue herons there. “Do you feel like
you are in Pittsford?”
Inside, the
house has an open plan, with the second and third floors opening onto the main space
and the 30-foot wall of windows situated above the sunken conversation pit on
the first floor.
“[Johnson] considers every angle,”
Annie says. “It’s sensuous and massive. It’s all about volume and space.”
Up in the master bedroom, which has
no doors, a low bed faces the windows. Leafy green light filters in from the
canopy of trees outside. Only a slender railing stands between the bedroom and
the spectacular view.
“It’s like waking up in the jungle,”
Annie’s husband, software developer Paul Kalnitz, says.
In addition to the proximity to
nature, the couple revels in the details of their home. “Every inch is
hand-considered, handmade,” Annie says, pointing out a joint where two oddly
angled roof sections come together perfectly. She loves the sleek walnut built-ins,
the fireplace tiles, and the open-riser stairs. “Jim Johnson’s houses are like
sculptures. We’re living in a sculpture.”
Johnson studied with Bruce Goff, a
professor of architecture at the University of Oklahoma, who combined unusual
materials in unexpected ways to create buildings that are both plant-like and
futuristic.
Johnson’s projects include over 25
custom homes and numerous religious buildings, including St. John Evangelist in
Greece, for which he won the Lillian Fairchild Award from the University of
Rochester. His CV also lists a wide array of workaday design jobs, from the
local (Altier’s shoe stores) to the exotic (a dorm in Basrah, Iraq). Perhaps
Johnson’s most famous landmark design is the Liberty Pole downtown.
Decorating the
Floating House might seem like an intimidating proposition, but not to its
residents. They moved here 18 months ago from a big Tudor house, which, Paul
says, just wasn’t right for them.
“We had been buying modern things,”
he says, “and we were surprised at how well they all came together here.” The
home is furnished with architect-designed furniture, which they collect. And
their colorful art-glass collection enlivens the surfaces. Annie’s
expressionistic paintings, which are hung here and there, add to the mix.
When they first saw the house a
couple of years ago, Paul was initially put-off. “From the driveway, it looks
like a shack,” he says, referring to the long, featureless, cedar-shake wall.
“It’s an antisocial house,” Annie
says, laughing. “That big wall says, ‘Go away!'”
“But as soon as I came inside, I
knew right away that I liked it,” Paul says. “And I wanted a house where I
wouldn’t have to mow the lawn.”
This article appears in Oct 9-15, 2002.
