The Perfect Fit for Your Custom Home
Poised and ready to meet the challenge of today’s new meaning of home, NSPJ Architects is one of the top full-service firms in the Kansas City area that focus on exceptional — and ever-evolving — residential design. Since opening their doors in 1961, their portfolio over the years has expanded to include landscape architecture, land planning, commercial and mixed-use work, and multi-family projects.
“Our history of work displays the inspired holistic, innovative, and unmatched expertise for our client’s projects,” says Paul Staats, Jr., AIA, principal architect and executive vice president of NSPJ. “With the depth of our expertise, this enables us to seamlessly combine all disciplines to deliver a cohesive design,” he notes.
NSPJ’s success has always focused on two things — the client’s needs and great design. Created through thoughtful attention to detail as well as proportion, balance, and scale, great design—both functional and efficient — carries through on all levels from the interior to the exterior spaces to make a house truly feel like a home.
“Today, modern families are looking to extend their environments due to the extensive time at home,” says Paul. “We can expand their living spaces to bring the outdoors in with three-seasons rooms, porches, terraces, and greenhouses. Through the orientation of these spaces, open-air porches and terraces allow heat gain from the sun in the southern sky during the winter months and block the north winds,” he adds.
Families are also looking to extend their living spaces through amenities such as water features, fountains, and pools as well as landscaped gardens that connect these amenities around the property. An exquisite example of this technique can be seen on this Kansas City estate located in a transitional area between rural and suburban settings on nearly 80 acres that the clients have pieced together over the years.
“For this project, we were able to take a very large home and keep it on a more intimate scale so the clients weren’t overwhelmed by the overall size of their home,” says Paul. “By adding a three-seasons room, a covered terrace, a pool, and a pool deck, there is a strong connection from the indoors to the outdoors to unify the spaces for the homeowners’ personal use or while entertaining,” he adds.
Other noteworthy features include a covered entry that warmly invites both homeowners and guests into the abode. Three distinctive brick chimneys create unique architectural interest while giving an elegant European touch to the home’s exterior façade. Inside, a spacious lower-level bar area accessed via a three-story circular staircase complements the Old-World aesthetic, emitting the feel of a cozy old English pub with custom masonry and millwork.
“A true collaboration between client, architect, landscape architect, and builder make our homes not only beautiful but also highly functional and livable based on the clients’ needs,” says Katie Martinovic, ASLA, CLARB, principal landscape architect and vice president of NSPJ. “The goal for this project was to maximize views and use the existing topography to create multiple outdoor living spaces for family and friends. We look at the existing topography and site conditions to create resort-style outdoor living spaces. Additionally, our planting plans include four seasons of plantings that ensure visual interest throughout all seasons,” she adds.
For this estate, Katie implemented stepped terraces to create a large water feature from the pool to the lower level while a smaller water feature at an upper courtyard and the main entry was used to bring water closer to the home. Buffer plantings, integration of a fruit orchard, and enhancement of the natural areas were all unique aspects of the landscape architecture.
“NSPJ works with each client to discover the home’s essence and the family for which it is intended,” says Katie. “We believe that creating a new home or remodeling an existing one is a process of making a place that feels both new and old — new, in that it is a fresh response to the existing conditions — and old, in that it contains deep and familiar qualities that make a place a home.”
