{"id":2561,"date":"2014-06-23T07:01:17","date_gmt":"2014-06-23T13:01:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lastbestnews.com\/site\/?p=2561"},"modified":"2014-06-24T08:07:11","modified_gmt":"2014-06-24T14:07:11","slug":"grain-bin-house-exemplifies-eastern-montana-modern-look","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/2014\/06\/grain-bin-house-exemplifies-eastern-montana-modern-look\/","title":{"rendered":"Little grain bin house on the prairie"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Grain<\/a>

Ed Kemmick\/Last Best News<\/p>

The view from Kate Morris’ grain bin house north of Great Falls is spectacular.<\/p><\/div>\n

VAUGHN \u2014 Late last year, building contractor Tom Skovron was at the lumberyard in Great Falls when he ran into Art West.<\/p>\n

West told Skovron that Kate Morris, the daughter of an old friend of his, was planning to convert a grain bin into a house on some property \u00a0about 20 miles northwest of Great Falls, near Vaughn. She hadn\u2019t had any luck finding a builder yet; was Skovron interested?<\/p>\n

Skovron said he told West he\u2019d built 300 grain bins and 150 houses in his long career.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut I never built a grain bin house,\u201d Skovron remembered telling him. \u201cSo I said, \u2018Let\u2019s go.\u2019 It\u2019s meant to be.\u201d<\/p>\n

Morris had already experienced the same sense of inevitability. She bought the grain bin in 2005 and had it erected on 250 acres her late father bought in 1986. Her plan was always to build a house inside the bin, but sometimes her friends wondered if she\u2019d ever get beyond the talking stage.<\/p>\n

At a New Year\u2019s Day party in Billings in 2013, Morris told some friends she was ready to start building, but that she didn\u2019t want to proceed without the help of a young architect named Nick Pancheau.<\/p>\n

Morris had taught art classes at Lockwood School \u2014 Lockwood is an unincorporated community just east of Billings \u2014 from 1988 until she retired three years ago. Pancheau, now 30, was a kindergartner at Lockwood in 1988 and he studied art with Morris every year through the sixth grade.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am the one who made him right-brained,\u201d Morris said. \u201cI worked so hard at it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Living\"<\/a>

Ed Kemmick\/Last Best News<\/p>

Architect Nich Pancheau and homeowner Kate Morris walk down the stairs past an\u00a0interior wall of glass, which gives people in the living room a view of the enveloping grain bin.<\/p><\/div>\n

Morris knew that Pancheau had earned a degree in architecture, but she didn\u2019t know where he was. Another friend at the party, artist Jon Lodge, not only knew that Pancheau was in Billings, he had his number in his phone. So Morris called him on the spot.<\/p>\n

Pancheau was more than interested. Besides remembering Morris as his favorite teacher, what she had in mind on the property near Vaughn was a perfect match for a concept his architectural firm had been developing over the past few years.<\/p>\n

The concept is what the team at Collaborative Design Architects was calling Eastern Montana Modern, meant to describe a style of architecture and design that celebrates the landscape, materials and traditions of eastern Montana.<\/p>\n

Jeff Kanning, one of the four partners at the firm, said they were all tired of the architecture associated with the mountain valleys of western Montana \u2014 the \u201cloggy stuff,\u201d the green shutters, the McMansions of many gables.<\/p>\n

Their pride, mixed with a bit of defensiveness, comes from their own backgrounds. Kanning is from Plentywood, Pancheau from Lockwood. Other architects with the firm hail from Scobey, Great Falls, Billings and Roundup.<\/p>\n

They like to quote Brian MacKay-Lyons, a Nova Scotian architect who said, \u201cOriginality is necessarily rooted in origin.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Living<\/a>

Ed Kemmick\/Last Best News<\/p>

Pancheau designed a cantilevered projection that extends out from the living room.<\/p><\/div>\n

A sense of place is key, as is a sense of the particular landscape on which a project is being planned.<\/p>\n

\u201cAn important part of our architecture is making use of the site,\u201d said Brian Johnson, another partner in the firm. \u201cIf you just spend time on a site \u2026 it makes all the sense in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

When Pancheau visited Morris\u2019 land near Vaughn, he quickly connected with the site, and with Morris\u2019 vision of her future home.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe totally got it,\u201d Morris said. \u201cHe just totally got it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Morris had the grain bin \u2014 your standard corrugated steel storage bin, 36 feet in diameter \u2014 erected on the side of a hill off Gordon Road, overlooking two cattail-ringed reservoirs and rolling hills of grass and wheat as far as the eye can see.<\/p>\n

Her father, Robert Morris, had owned the Self-Service Furniture Store in Great Falls and he loved to fish and hunt. The land near Vaughn was his rural retreat. Morris said her father made the 30-minute drive out to the land almost every day, sometimes to relax but more often to get something done.<\/p>\n

He never built any structures on the land, but he made a second, larger reservoir to complement the original irrigation reservoir, and he planted all of the many trees on the property. Oddly enough, he never spent the night there, Morris said, probably because her late mother, Rosemary, was from Evanston, Ill., and did not care for the prairies.<\/p>\n

\"catwalk\"<\/a>

Ed Kemmick\/Last Best News<\/p>

Pancheau, builder Tom Skovron and Morris stop to talk on the iron catwalk leading into the house.<\/p><\/div>\n

Morris took after her father and loves the prairies, and the buildings found on them. That\u2019s why, when she was thinking of putting a retirement house on the land, she knew it would start with either a grain bin or a Quonset hut.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese structures of the prairie \u2014 I love them,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Morris and her artist friends, after a cocktail or two, often drew \u201cplans\u201d for the house, which Pancheau described as \u201cwhimsical, completely out-of-scale drawings.\u201d But he understood the vision, and what he designed matched Morris\u2019 dreams to a T.<\/p>\n

The bin is reached by an iron catwalk that leads from the slope into which the house \u00a0is built to the second floor, the living area.\u00a0 It would have been almost impossible to make the rooms themselves round, but Morris\u2019 goal was not \u201cto lose the bin.\u201d Pancheau\u2019s solution was to make a wall of the living room a bank of windows. Those windows don\u2019t look outside, but to the curved wall of the bin. And when you walk down the stairs alongside the wall, you see the bin and the conical roof on top of it.<\/p>\n

Pancheau said the worst thing he could have done was to have simply inserted a square living space inside the round bin.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s not the way to handle something as magical as this amazing space,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

On the east side of the bin, opposite the wall of interior windows, are the details that make the bin so eye-catching. Pancheau designed two more banks of windows, one large and one small, that project out from the bin about a foot.<\/p>\n

More striking still is a V-shaped projection that extends the living room out 5 feet beyond the wall of the bin. There is another row of tall windows there, and a door that leads from the living room to a 7-foot-long steel deck, supported by steel beams. Like the bridge to the house, the deck and a lower patio are made of open bar grating.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe wouldn\u2019t have done bar grates,\u201d Pancheau said, \u201cbut Kate said in the winter she didn\u2019t want to have to shovel.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t want to come out here and work on stuff,\u201d she said. \u201cOnly my art.\u201d<\/p>\n

Each of the two floors has about a thousand square feet of space. The second story, with a bedroom, kitchen, living room and full bath, is where Morris will live. The ground floor has a guest room, utility room, another bathroom and a large art studio that will also serve as guest quarters. There is a huge attic space above the second floor that Morris isn\u2019t sure how she\u2019ll use, though it will probably be another gathering space.<\/p>\n

\"CapreAir_Variable\"<\/a><\/div><\/div>The building project was delayed by \u201cthe winter from hell,\u201d Morris said, but it is nearing completion. Skovron, the Great Falls builder, said the work has involved \u201ca lot of head-scratching\u201d because \u201cit\u2019s not your normal start-from-scratch project,\u201d but every problem has been solvable.<\/p>\n

His involvement also influenced Morris\u2019 purchasing decisions. She was going to buy a lot of her furnishings and appliances from national stores and have them delivered, Skovron said, but he suggested she check out Eklund\u2019s Appliance & TV in Great Falls.<\/p>\n

She\u2019d lived in Billings for decades and knew little of Eklund\u2019s, so she was skeptical. But not for long.<\/p>\n

\u201cNext thing I know,\u201d Skovron said, \u201cI\u2019m getting text after text: \u2018They\u2019ve got this! They\u2019ve got that!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Indeed Eklund\u2019s did, even the German-made 24-inch stove that she wanted to fit into her cozy kitchen.<\/p>\n

Kanning said Morris\u2019 relatively modest grain bin house pays homage to eastern Montana traditions and to the ethos that shaped life on the plains.<\/p>\n

\"Bin\"<\/a>

Ed Kemmick\/Last Best News<\/p>

The back of the grain bin house, with the two reservoirs in the background.<\/p><\/div>\n

People on the plains made do with what they had and didn\u2019t use more than they needed, he said: \u201cThey used every part of everything.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s about more than architecture,\u201d Johnson said. \u201cIt\u2019s about defining identity.\u201d<\/p>\n

The partners are hoping to extend the Eastern Montana Modern concept in other directions, too, using it to brand clothing, furniture and even foods that fit with their vision.<\/p>\n

Kanning said they used to get asked what style of architecture they were aiming at, and whether they had a name for what they do. His first stab at answering the question was \u201cThe Not-so-big Montana Modern Sustainable Infill Housing,\u201d a description he posted on the wall of his office.<\/p>\n

However, he said with a laugh, \u201cWe knew we needed something smaller than that.\u201d He came up with Eastern Montana Modern a few years ago, and the concept now guides everything they do.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt seemed like we were already doing this, and now we finally knew what to call it,\u201d Kanning said.<\/p>\n

Editor’s note<\/strong>: Here are some more photos of the grain bin house project, and photos of a couple of other projects created by Collaborative Design Architects.<\/p>\n\n\t\t\t

\n\t\t\t

\n\n\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\t<\/a>\n\n\t\t\t<\/p>\n\n\t\t\t

<\/a>
Ed Kemmick\/Last Best News permalink<\/a><\/h6>

Morris' grain bin house is nearing completion.<\/p><\/div>

<\/a>
Ed Kemmick\/Last Best News permalink<\/a><\/h6>

Pancheau, Morris and Skovron in what will be the living room.<\/p><\/div>

Collaborative Design Architects permalink<\/a><\/h6>

The grain bin house, early in the project.<\/p><\/div>

Ed Kemmick\/Last Best News permalink<\/a><\/h6>

Another look at the living room projection. That's Pancheau under the deck.<\/p><\/div>

Ed Kemmick\/Last Best News permalink<\/a><\/h6>

Pancheau and Morris on the deck of the house.<\/p><\/div>

Ed Kemmick\/Last Best News permalink<\/a><\/h6>

An iron catwalk leads from the hillside to the grain bin house.<\/p><\/div>

Ed Kemmick\/Last Best News permalink<\/a><\/h6>

There are two ponds on the property. This one was built by Kate Morris' father, Robert.<\/p><\/div>

Collaborative Design Architects permalink<\/a><\/h6>

A panoramic view of the land.<\/p><\/div>

Ed Kemmick\/Last Best News permalink<\/a><\/h6>

Yellow window frames, blue sky.<\/p><\/div>

Ed Kemmick\/Last Best News permalink<\/a><\/h6>

A view of the house through a shroud of Russian olive trees.<\/p><\/div>

Ed Kemmick\/Last Best News permalink<\/a><\/h6>

Pancheau and Morris on the dam between the two ponds.<\/p><\/div>

Ed Kemmick\/Last Best News permalink<\/a><\/h6>

Skovron, Pancheau and Morris check out the house's expansive attic.<\/p><\/div>

Ed Kemmick\/Last Best News permalink<\/a><\/h6>

One more view of the house.<\/p><\/div>

Collaborative Design Architects permalink<\/a><\/h6>

Collaborative Design Architects designed this rest stop in Conrad for the Montana Department of Transportation.<\/p><\/div>

Collaborative Design Architects permalink<\/a><\/h6>

The entryway to the rest stop in Conrad.<\/p><\/div>

Collaborative Design Architects permalink<\/a><\/h6>

Collaborative Design Architects also worked on the Town & Country store in Bridger.<\/p><\/div>

<\/a>
Collaborative Design Architects permalink<\/a><\/h6>

Another view of the Town & Country store.<\/p><\/div><\/div><\/div>