Photos: Amanda Anderson
Raised in Hamburg, Germany, Toby Witte enjoyed a childhood populated by good design. A premier destination for architecture lovers, Hamburg’s cityscape blends industrial brick bastions with cutting-edge interventions in concrete, steel, and glass to create a dramatic fusion of perspectives. From the outskirts of the city, his fascination was further stoked as he learned about the pioneers of German modernism. The Bauhaus movement’s focus on functionality, minimalism, and the integration of technology to counterbalance the fragmentation and intensity of daily life made an impression on young Tobias.
“The main focus of my practice is to bring happiness to my clients,” states Witte from his home studio outside of Charlotte, NC, where the frequency of personalized architectural expression isn’t quite as common as in Hamburg. “Approximately 2 percent of single-family homes built in the United States involve an architect. The other 98 percent are built by developers stacking boxes together. In my book, Supersizing Bliss, I make the point that the state of housing in the U.S. is wasteful and misdirected.”
Witte’s firm, Wittehaus, focuses on high-performance homes. Additionally, he is an Adjunct Professor at his alma mater, the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Just as he takes pride in contributing to the next generation of designers, he strives to educate his clients on the importance of design as the backbone of joyful living.
“The residential real estate market in the U.S. seems to be based on two numbers – square feet and zip code. Neither has anything to do with the quality of life inside your home,” says Witte. “My goal is to break those paradigms. My job is to provide clients with knowledge, to help them understand what makes a home enjoyable.”
Building on another German design ideology, Passivehaus, the custom homes Witte designs balance a high-performance building envelope with site orientation and shading strategies to substantially reduce the amount of energy required to heat and cool them.
“Creating a continuous air barrier with the right insulation and orienting windows to let the sun heat homes in the Winter are central Passivehaus design strategies. Using overhangs to block the Summer sun, means the home requires less energy to cool when temperatures raise outside,” says Witte. “Solar panels are now to the point where they are essentially free, offset by the energy savings. So, for almost no extra cost, my clients end up with a resilient, net-zero home.”
Put into practice, though so far none of Witte’s clients have opted to certify their homes as passive, they are. Likewise, since founding Wittehaus in 2017, all his projects have engaged solar energy, and return power to the grid. Most have storage, as well. Asked for an exemplar, Witte points to Gerendák, a 3-bedroom, 4.5 bath custom home jutting into space along the shores of Lake Wylie in Charlotte, North Carolina.
“Most commonly, my clients are a couple that is approaching retirement. The couple who built this home wanted something really cool. They showed me pictures of incredible residential architecture and asked me to watch a specific episode of a TV show, The World’s Most Extraordinary Homes,” says Witte. Asked to amaze, as he always is, Witte settled into what he does best. “I helped them pick a property, develop a concept, get it permitted, and approved by the HOA. Then, I led them through construction and even helped them move in.”
While drawing inspiration from television and architectural magazines is thrilling, residential architects are obligated to meet subdivision design guidelines, local building codes, and other site-specific regulations on every custom home. In a state extensively populated by bland, by-the-dozen, stacked-box houses, Witte considered the community’s rather typical design requirements not as an obstacle, but a launch point.
“The design guidelines required stone for a percentage of the base and wood elements for a percentage of the exterior. So, we rammed a couple of stone walls into the hill to create a terrace. We set the house on top of that and pushed parts of the form over the edge, floating rooms out into space,” says Witte of the bold moves that make a Wittehaus solution one-of-a-kind. “The home is entered on-grade, street side. Upon entry, the space feels suspended in mid-air, among the trees, with no view of the ground plane at all.”
Getting some of his radical ideas built hasn’t always been easy. Given the departure from the stacked, stick-framed construction residential builders in North Carolina are accustomed to, Witte had to take measures into his own hands to ensure some of his early work was built.
“Throughout much of the Southeast, it used to be all cookie-cutter houses. I decided to get a general contractor’s license so I could build what I’ve designed, whenever needed,” says Witte. He takes credit for having built about eight separate homes during his 25 years in practice. “Building homes helped me understand the entire process much better, including financing, how to sequence subcontractors, and the pain points of efficient construction. That allows me to smartly guide my clients toward cohesive, holistic, eco-friendly homes that offer a chance at pure joy.”
The difference between stacking boxes and custom residential begins with personalization, which involves understanding the home’s occupants and lifestyle. Then, designing tailored spaces. With Witte, the client scoping process begins with a diagnostic review.
“I take a few weeks initially to grill the clients. I have a million and two questions. I help them develop a vision board of things they like, while I assess the real estate market, gather all the site concerns, and zoning issues. Then, I filter everything into a cohesive plan,” continues Witte. With all the cards on the table, many times, custom home clients need to be reeled in. “I tell the truth. It’s too big. You can’t afford it. It will take longer than expected to build. The helicopter pad must go, and so on. From that point, the client can decide if they want to move forward with me or not.”
Witte finds that client expectations on square footage are overblown for an occupancy of two with a dog, hosting occasional family gatherings. He believes oversized square footage expectations are a symptom of the stacked box building strategies speculative residential developers employ to build bigger than the house next door.
“Clients often come in asking for a four to six-thousand-square-foot home. Many of those who move forward end up with two to three thousand square feet instead. Well-designed, that turns out to be plenty to allow them to live together and have their own spots for hobbies, toys, etc, shares Witte. “By reducing the home’s built square footage, the dollar per square foot goes into higher quality finishes that look fantastic while being very durable. Configuring rooms so they open to nature everywhere, extends living spaces by blurring the lines between inside and out.”
Tucked into the trees, at Gerendák, Witte’s approach results in a building form that looks radical from the ground plane yet is geometrically simple from a bird’s eye view. The home’s name is Hungarian for beams, and ties to the client’s heritage. The use of a modern post-and-beam structure eliminates the need for load-bearing walls.
“The builders, Lynn Luxury Homes, I worked with at Gerendák were awesome. The Owner, Buddy Edwards, and I got to geek out on the building science of this home,” says Witte with amusement. “We used glulam beams, made of laminated, dimensional lumber, that create large, engineered wood structural members as strong as steel that store carbon rather than consume it. This means no walls, only glass. It’s like a tree house; incredibly simple, quiet, and peaceful; a very Zen experience.”
Of course, as a modern home, Gerendák features a slew of smart home technologies. Witte’s proud of the projection screen television that disappears into the ceiling when not in use and the patio heaters that are powered by stored solar overages, meaning they operate at no expense.
“The whole house is tech-forward. My goal as an architect is to get away from the design standards set by the mass housing market,” concludes Witte. “I believe that for those who can conceive and construct a custom home, there is a chance to supersize bliss for no extra cost. Why not take it?”
