The Designs of Al Platt
From the Early Spring 2004 Issue
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A one-time high school English teacher from Atlanta’s Piedmont area, architect Al Platt chose little Brevard, N.C. for his home and practice. Now a powerhouse designer with clients up and down the East Coast, a second-place finish in HGTV’s 2005 Dream House competition and a beloved screen porch, he is a key influence in today’s mountain architecture. Here he defines this special style. Offers tips on ways to get it. And predicts future trends. 



Made for enchanted evenings, this Lake Toxaway home’s covered porch takes full advantage of the breathtaking mountain-water panorama. More than just a pretty place, it’s positioned for pleasant entertaining, with the kitchen behind it and its own adjacent fireplace and dining area.

Q: Your name comes up over and over in connection with projects in the mountains. What are some of them?

A: We’ve done the entry gatehouse at Balsam Mountain Preserve, conducted planning sessions on mountain architecture at Bear Lake Reserve, much of the work in Straus Park and some with the Mountain Air developer, a project in Highlands Cove, as well as lots of houses in Champion Hills, Highlands, Cashiers, Lake Toxaway and several of The Cliffs.

Q: What are the origins of mountain style?

A: It’s not universally true but in a lot of cases, the mountains were settled in a tradition that goes back to the 19th century… places like Cedar Mountain or Flat Rock or Cashiers in North Carolina. People came here to enjoy the mountain climate and escape summer’s heat and humidity. These were fairly sophisticated people, people of some worldliness, for example George Vanderbilt, who came from all over, many by rail. They didn’t leave their sophistication or ideas about domestic environment behind, but those things were executed here with less access to materials and the kinds of skills that were available in Charleston or in coastal places. That’s why mountain houses tend to be simpler, cruder versions of other styles. They were sort of rusticated because they were made in rustic circumstances by more rustic people... 

With a wide porch facing Lake Toxaway, N.C., this rustic home is an example of the architect restoring light which he took away through the porch feature. The strategy: wide expanses of glass at the living and ceiling levels, coupled with additional windows over the main beams at porchside. Also of special interest is the two-way fireplace that serves both the dining/sitting area (foreground) and the living room beyond. 

Q: For example?

A: There are variations of English Tudor and French country that are simplified with less detail. The edges are kind of knocked off it. The surfaces and finishes are less worked. Rocks and walls are all the same color, using the same stuff that came off the mountain.

Q: But it all starts from traditional styles?

A: Yes, the mountain attitude is to make that style happen, but to do it in a much simpler, less academic, less correct way. For example, woven laurel with a pair of diagonal balusters might give a design some order. Or simplified crown moldings, or the use of native stone, which is different in different locations.

Q: Is that your biggest challenge?

A: It’s really important to me that when we’re finished with something, it looks like we were never there, as though, if the place itself could have spontaneously produced the thing or design, it might have been something like that.

Al Platt relaxes near wood samples in the conference room of his Brevard, N.C. office. 






Q: That’s an amazing idea. Do other architects share it?

A: A very important person to me was a wonderful gentleman and architect named Harwell Harris, who once, during a teaching session, stopped, looked up and said, “We want to make it [the design] look like it took about five minutes to figure out.” We don’t want to leave our fingerprints on it. 

Q: What other things do you try to incorporate in your designs?

A: Classically proportioned things. Using logs for columns and wood roofing or wood shakes whenever we can, not metal because it’s often reflective. It can produce a whole lot of glare when the sun hits it. Things in the mountains are visible from below or above. It’s not like designing for flat terrain. You can see things from a distance, and they can intrude on scenery in ways that aren’t possible in flat or rolling country. I also use a fair amount of timber framing with recycled timbers – from one or two homes or hewn so long ago they’ve often been used three times. I love them; dismantled timbers have a patina, a rich brown and few hardware marks, so they contrast nicely with painted walls and add a feeling of age and timelessness. That’s another way you can take your fingerprints off something, and it doesn’t become dated.


Variation on the porch theme, this wing of the Tracy home is outfitted with a fireplace for outdoor living and dining, while opening to the exterior terrace and garden.

Q: Is keeping fingerprints off your work that important to you?

A: If you’re really successful in this busy, stress-filled world and if you’re lucky enough to have a place that can help you sustain contentment, it’s a wonderful thing. I don’t want to intrude on that
by cleverness or anything of that kind. It really lets the owner take possession of his place.

Q: But aren’t there more things you favor in your creations?

A: A lot of bark shakes, less-worked material than more-worked material. But with all the fixtures, fittings, all the materials – there’s one reason to coordinate it so it will all go away. It’s like cooking… when you get it right, you can’t really distinguish what went into the recipe.


To make the most of its view, this North Carolina lake house features a 60-foot-long porch that wraps to a private master sitting area at one end and the attractive pavilion with dining area at the other. To prevent the location from being overly shaded, Platt included three pairs of unobtrusive skylights in the porch ceiling.


Q: How is southern mountain style different from western mountain style?

A: Western style is characterized by big, round logs that are often pale or stained orange or a brighter color. They shout Colorado or Montana, and they’re very different. The vernacular there is much more barn-like than the more refined, yet rusticated style of the East.

Q: What are some of the projects you remember most or are most proud of?

A: A seed [new] project, part of our conservation practice, like the Womble cabin. It’s about 15 miles away and was built as a retreat. It’s tiny but it led to a whole series of designs that are executed or being executed with a conservation attitude about land use. In addition, information about the project was recently published in Fine Homebuilding magazine.

Q: What’s the objective of the conservation practice?

A: We work with developers and landowners to help them with programs and planning aimed at introducing significant conservation in their use of land, and our first project was Richland Ridge, N.C. This new practice was the influence of my son, Parker, and that practice has grown. Now two staff people are involved.

Q: What are the most important things you try to capture for clients’ homes today?

A: A real theme of my designs for a long time has been providing opportunities for outdoor living in as many ways as I can. In our climate, we can sometimes use the outdoors year-round and often a great deal of the year. So outdoor living has been evolving in my practice and I see it in other people’s houses. Over and over, I hear them say, “This is where we live.” With an outdoor feature such as a covered porch, you can do three or four things: sit around the fireplace, eat, look at the view and cook.

Q: So you’ve put new emphasis on porches and open areas?

A: Well, personally, I built a pavilion for my wife and myself. It’s a sitting area with a fireplace, dining area, kitchen and sleeping loft. There are no walls; it’s all screened porch. It came out of a remark when we were sitting in Adirondack chairs and slapping mosquitoes and Cindy said, “All we need is a screened porch.” No house. We do have a bathhouse nearby with two bathrooms, a laundry room and a storage room, which was invaded by a bear once. We also have a swimming pool, but it’s really porch living, and it’s instantly relaxing.

Q: What is your most recent project?

A: The most recent is a conservation development with the developer, which we designed for the HGTV Dream Home 2005 and for which we were one of the three finalists. The project is located in Madison County, N.C., and it’s a new development called Little Pine.

Q: Do you ever get your inspiration from classic designs?

A: I get inspiration from all kinds of things, and I like to look at all kinds of things and go places outside and inside the country. 

ALL ABOUT AL PLATT
Q: Please tell us about yourself. For instance, where are you from, where did you go to college and how long have you known you wanted to be an architect?

A: I grew up in Atlanta and attended a Catholic military prep school, but during my senior year my parents were transferred to New York, and while it may have been a good idea to go to Notre Dame when I was in Atlanta, it wasn’t when I was in New York. I felt like a displaced person. I finished college at Chapel Hill [the University of North Carolina], earned a degree in English and taught school a couple of years in North Carolina where I came to the insight that I might want to see if I could become an architect.

Q: It seems a major leap from English to architecture. Is there a common thread?

A: The connection for me was my college interest in literature, but I was also interested in the experience of place and environment. I was aware of how I felt – good or bad – in my surroundings and how they affected me. I became interested in that and what an architect does to create surroundings, which I studied later in environmental design in graduate school. Among architects, there are those who are more consciously “physical-thing” designers and are interested in the thingness of a thing. I was always interested in the effect of the thing, more than the thing for its own sake.

Q: So when did you decide to go back and study architecture?

A: I graduated in 1969. Two years later, I found out that N.C. State had started a graduate architecture program for students without design backgrounds. I took a day off from my teaching job and went over to the campus. I walked into this place, an English teacher, mind you, with all these graphics around me and this instructor, Bob Burns, was open to my interest. He could have finished me with one sentence. Anyway in 1975, I received a master of architecture degree.

Q: How did you get started?

A: I brought my young family to Brevard, N.C., where I joined a firm to do my apprenticeship and qualify to take my licensing exam. There were four of us: my wife Cindy (my high school sweetheart) and two children. A third child was born here two years later.

Q: And you never wanted to leave for a bigger city?

A: Actually, we left in 1979. I had my license, and thought I needed more experience. We went to Wilmington, N.C. where I worked with [architect] Ligon Flynn. It was a wonderful experience, an important experience, but during those three years, I continued to be involved in the mountains. Cindy and I thought we’d make a better go of it if we came back here, so we returned in ’82. We’ve been here ever since. The biggest surprise is that while my wife and I knew this would be a good place to raise our children, we also assumed they would leave. That didn’t happen. They’ve all gotten their education and come back. The town has changed and the kids have changed.

Q: How did that happen?

A: Well, there’s Parker, 31, a 1994 North Carolina State graduate in architecture who joined me at my office; our daughter Maggie (McLauchlin) who’s married and teaches school in town, and our youngest, Woody, who formed a bluegrass band, The Steep Canyon Rangers, that tours all over the country.

Q: What drew you to architecture in the first place?

A: Architecture has a whole lot to do with emotions… A space or the way the light falls on something or the way materials come together, those things affect how we feel directly. You can be affected and not even know it. Richard Neutra, an early 20th-century California architect, pushed the envelope and often used effects and techniques that are way beyond the level of a beginner or a layperson. Someone once asked him, “Do you think these refinements that interest you so much are perceived by the your clients?” He answered: “Why, sir, a man may never know what leaks his happiness has sprung.” That makes the point. 

Q: When did you start your own firm?

A: The first time in 1977, and then when we returned in ’82.

This kitchen is spartan without being antiseptic and carries out the home’s key theme: sections that overlap/underlap each other for easy flow and open living. Part of Platt’s favorite configuration, an additional portion of the L-design is situated to the left, with ends anchored by tall things... a refrigerator at one end and oven at the other. 

Q: Since you were from the Piedmont, it would have been natural for you to go back to Atlanta. What drew you to the mountains instead?

A: I have many friends and many clients in Atlanta, but I have no desire to live in metropolitan Atlanta. Instead, we moved to the Southern corridor of the mountains, 40 minutes west of Asheville. At the time, it was the most remote, intact mountain town in the mountains – a real community. For example, there is just one high school in Brevard, so our kids, all of whom went on to become college graduates, knew everybody and were known by everybody.

Q: What’s your personal home like?

A: When we came here, I bought property and built a house, later sold it when we left, then bought it back for less than we sold it for. The interesting thing about that house is that it was the setting for a Harlequin Romance because of a subsequent owner. We expanded that house but then one day we decided to buy our neighbor’s house, a 1959 brick ranch. We’ve extensively added to and altered it.

Q: How has your firm changed over the years?

A: Today we have two registered architects plus [son] Parker and a total of 10 staff members. We’ve been that size for many years. As to our practice, it’s pretty widespread, with clients in Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Florida, Alabama, California, Virginia, North Carolina and South Carolina. We interact with worldly people all over the country. I built an office originally on the second floor of the chamber of commerce building on Main Street, then two years ago, we expanded into the second floor of the adjoining building where we built a design center and offices for the Conservation Advisors of North Carolina, Inc., which I own with my son Parker and John Witherspoon, the young man who runs it.

Q: Do you have any other professional interests?

A: Besides membership in the American Institute of Architects, I have also written articles for Fine Homebuilding, which featured a story about the small cabin I designed with the big porch. The story was titled, “A House That’s Half Porch,” and it described a 1,000-square-foot living space with an 800-square-foot porch. By far my principal interest is to teach and practice land conservation in connection with our other work.

--Norma Lugar

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