Masterful Design

Don’t worry if you experience déjà vu while visiting the new masters’ houses for Martel and Jones Colleges. There is a
rational explanation: The floor plans of the two houses are mirror images of each other. But though they look a lot alike,
the two houses have distinct personalities.

Designer Michael Graves uses simple, somewhat blocky, earth-tone exteriors to mask large, open, airy interiors bright with natural light. The ground floor of each house is the public area, consisting of a two-story-tall great room, an adjacent dining area, a spacious kitchen, a den, an office, a bathroom, and a two-car garage. Upstairs are the masters’ private living quarters—four bedrooms and two baths. Walled courtyards flank the homes.

Inside, pastel wall colors enhance the spacious feel of the rooms, and hardwood floors not only add elegance but help anchor the main spaces. Numerous glass double doors to the courtyards and throughout the interiors further open up the rooms, bring in lots of light, and encourage free flow of traffic during large gatherings. The houses came as packages, complete with furniture, hand-woven area rugs, and furnishings designed by Graves. He selected most of the art on the walls, which includes some of his own work, and he even designed the Martel banner and china.

Martel masters Arthur and Joan Few and Jones masters Enrique and Maribel Barrera are very pleased with the results. “We are enjoying it,” Joan says. “It’s a very functional house.” Functionality is important since these residences will see a lot of student and faculty visitors. “It has these great open spaces,” says Enrique, “and the layout is really made for entertaining. At one recent senior dinner, we sat 50 very easily in the dining room.”

Despite the similarity in floor plans, the two homes have very individual characters. “It’s interesting to notice the differences,” says Maribel. “The Martel courtyards have gardens, and ours have patios. The offices are shifted, and we have two doors exiting at the front instead of one.”

The furniture and furnishings contribute to the illusion of difference through the use of distinct lines, patterns, and color schemes in the two homes. Also, Martel House has more of the “Graves look” in the finer details. “Graves didn’t furnish Jones House as completely as he did Martel House,” Maribel explains, “because we already had furniture from the old Jones House.” Martel House, being completely new, had to be furnished from scratch. “Downstairs it’s almost all Michael Graves,” Joan says. “Upstairs is our personal stuff. In the den are my piano and our family pictures and a few of our pieces of art, so we have our personal things around us. But Graves did all the furniture and picked all the colors.”

Also different are the dining tables. “I definitely had to have a long table,” says Maribel. In contrast, the table in Martel is round. “The dining table is the only thing we specifically asked for,” says Joan. “Arthur said he wanted a round table, so he got his round table. It’s handmade of solid white maple, and it’s so heavy that it had to be made in four pieces.”

The beautiful and ample kitchens were definitely created with entertaining in mind. “The kitchen is my favorite room,” Maribel admits. “It’s designed so well. The restaurant-style oven and range is big, and there’s two of everything since we frequently entertain large groups of students. It’s all very easy to maintain, and it’s nice to have such a large, airy space since people tend to accumulate in the kitchen. The architect was brilliant in putting these double doors between the kitchen and dining area because that encourages flow into the dining area.”

While the two kitchens are similar in layout, the one in Martel House shows more of the Graves flair—kitchen objects designed by Graves are everywhere. “There are Michael Graves knives,” Joan says, pointing, “the coffee pot, the tea kettle, all the pots and pans,
the soap dispenser, the paper towel dispenser, ice bucket, and on and on.” Graves’s curvilinear kitchen objects are as whimsical as they are functional. The spout of the tea kettle, for instance, ends in a policeman’s whistle that sounds when the water boils.

As with other recent Rice buildings, Martel House and Jones House blend traditional Rice architectural elements with distinctive looks all their own. And the interiors are truly warm and inviting—perfect environments for the fond memories and new traditions that will be generated by the masters who live there and the students who visit for decades to come.

—Christopher Dow