What are some of the trends you are seeing in modern design?
Some of the trends in modern design that I see on the west coast are getting away from long, large, solid, unbroken surfaces, such as those created by stucco exterior cement plaster. People like to break it up into other materials such as tile or a siding product that creates shadows or different kinds of patterns and textures. It gives warmth and maybe a scale that people can relate to and maybe even touch with their hands.
How does the Aspyre Collection, including Artisan materials, help emphasize the modern design style here on the west coast?
The Artisan siding is good to use on the west coast because our architecture style tends to look towards wood construction as a point of departure. If you look at the history of our area, whether it's older homes or modern homes in the past 40 or 50 years, there's usually a use of wood siding. What's nice about the Artisan siding is that it’s not a wood product, but it has all those nice attributes of wood siding. It's durable; it’s long lasting but also refers to the long history of using wood siding on modern homes on the west coast.
What effect were you trying to achieve through the specific Artisan product choices on this house?
The effect of the Artisan siding that I was trying to find and got ultimately was the shadows that were created by the large profile of the lap siding.
One of the nice design features of the V-Groove is how we can miter it to turn the corners. If you look on the house, the horizontal lines of the V-Groove turn the corner and give the house a real well crafted look. What we also liked about the V-Groove is that there’s a gentle little V-shaped lean. So it gives a very subtle V-shadow line…and we really like that subtlety.
Why is the Aspyre Collection so well suited for this project?
Artisan products are really well suited for this project for three reasons. One reason is that we really like the shadow line—it looks really handsome on this building, especially since we have some large wall areas that need to be dressed up a bit. Another one, it takes paint really well. The last one is that there's a fire rating—it’s fire resistant.
Do you have plans to use the Aspyre Collection in the future?
I plan on using James Hardie® products and the Artisan product, again, on future projects. In fact, I'm planning a next one right now.