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Washingtonian Award admit abundant light throughout the day while providing views
of the surrounding countryside. White walls, blond wood flooring,
Becherer House darker wood cabinetry and trim, and other materials create open,
Earlysville, VA airy, and comfortable interior spaces that seem to hover quietly
just above the landscape.
Robert M. Gurney, FAIA, The design is a study in how purity of form, line, and color
Architect can create a thoroughly modern residence that references rural
vernacular architecture. The house fits into its nature-dominated
Interior Designer: Baron Gurney Interiors site not by attempting to blend in with it, but by providing a clear
Landscape Architects: Campion Hruby Landscape Architects but polite counterpoint to it.
Structural Engineers: D. Anthony Beale, LLC
General Contractor: Shelter Associates, Ltd. The Becherer House was previously covered in the Winter 2014
issue of ARCHITECTUREDC.
The 4,175-square-foot, four-bedroom Becherer House—designed
by Robert M. Gurney, FAIA, and located in Albemarle County,
Virginia—is about the same size as the Rockport Residence. And it
employs the same basic volumetric arrangement—two parallel,
gabled pavilions that are slightly offset front to back, connected by
a third, perpendicular pavilion enclosing the house’s main public
living space. In spite of these similarities, however, the Becherer
House projects a completely different sensibility.
With spare, clean detailing and a high-contrast white, gray,
and black exterior color scheme, the Becherer House reduces the
concept of the gabled house to its geometric essentials, creating a
structure that sits formally but respectfully on its site, announcing
to others, in the manner of a graphic-arts poster, that “this is a
modern rural house.”
A stone terrace and manicured lawn provide a formal ground
plane for the project, as well as a transition from the house’s
disciplined geometry to the site’s rolling pastures and wooded
areas. Large expanses of glass, particularly in the central pavilion,

Main living and dining areas
of the Becherer House.

Exterior of the Becherer House. Photos © Maxwell MacKenzie Architectural Photographer

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