Honabach House

Year: 2025 Design & Honor Awards | Category: Residential Over $1 Million

Designed for a young professional couple and their teenage daughter, the Honabach House is located on a 1 1/4-acre wooded site which slopes down from the street to a small creek at the rear of the property.

The project brief called for a 4-bedroom house, with an open kitchen, dining and living room spaces adjacent to large on-grade outdoor entertainment areas. Working with the natural slope of the land, the design locates the bedrooms on the upper, entry level and the entertainment spaces on the lower, on-grade terrace level. The design creates a 2-story house that appears as a smaller, more contextual 1-story house from the street.

Design Challenge

Physical Context – Design Challenge No.1

Designed for a young professional couple and their teenage daughter, the Honabach House is located on a quiet residential street in Brookhaven, Georgia. The 1 1/4-acre site slopes down from the street to a small creek at the rear of the property. Mature hardwood trees create a beautiful wooded area over the back half of the site.

Originally developed in the 1950’s, the project’s neighborhood has maintained too few of the modest 1-story ranch homes of that era. Nicely scaled structures with low pitched roofs and uniform setbacks from the street once created an aesthetic not often found in today’s in-town neighborhoods.

Unfortunately, many of these original homes are still being replaced with large 2-story structures with high ceilings and steeply sloping roofs. The Honabach House offers a new contextual approach to creating modern home design: Design with an appropriate sense of scale and a strong relationship to its site.

Project Brief – Design Challenge No. 2

The project brief called for a 4-bedroom house, with an open kitchen, dining and living room spaces immediately adjacent to large on-grade outdoor entertainment areas. The brief also called for ample storage and mechanical spaces at the lower level.

Firm
Philip Babb Architect

Project Location
Brookhaven, Georgia

Completion Date
12/2/2024

Architects and Designers
Philip Babb

Structural Engineer
Mason Peterson, Skywark Engineering PC

Landscape
Ruho Design Group

General Contractor
Principle Builders Group

Interior Designer
Scott Laslie Interior Design

Photographer
@johnclemmer