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"Open Auditions\nOur continuing look at designs selected for publication from our Open Auditions held around the country. This month we feature residences in Michigan, Mexico, Nebraska and California.\n\"We wanted the screen porch from the beginning\u2014it was a big part of the concept,\" architectural designer Kevin Akey says. Just off the first floor's main living areas, the porch plays a central role in the life of his contemporary 5,000-square-foot house, on a lakefront about an hour outside Detroit. It's a favorite gathering spot for Akey and his family much of the year and provides needed cross breezes during the hot summer months.\n\"The kids hand feed the turtles and fish every day,\" remarks Akey about the foyer's focal point, a live pond with a glass bridge over it. A second-story waterfall empties into it.\nHeated, stained concrete floors, custom-made furniture and a fireplace\u2014designed and built by Akey\u2014characterize the living room. Floor-to-ceiling glass offers a view of the lake.\nIn the kitchen, the island shape and floating soffit acts an extension of a serpentine wall that flows throughout the entire home. A walk-in pantry is accessed through the rolling door.\n\"Rather than avoiding nature, my buildings look to face and embrace it,\" explains architect Alberto Alvarez Valdivia, whose own place is no exception. He sited the getaway to make the most of its spectacular hillside location overlooking Puerto Vallarta's famed Los Arcos marine reserve. An appreciation of vernacular Mexican art, design and architecture is also apparent in the 15,000-square-foot house, from the palapa off the living room to the emphasis on traditional Mexican furniture throughout (chosen with the help of designers Cecilia Gonzalez and Pia Fernandez).\nMagenta- and reddish-orange-colored rooms keep \"the Mexicanity in mind,\" remarks Valdivia, \"Each room presents a different color scheme.\"\n\"The house was built around the trees, and local materials were used on roofs, terraces and floors,\" says the architect. \"A Pacific Mexican house was the objective.\"\n\"The views and the color were most important,\" says Valdivia. The ocean can be viewed from all of the major rooms; orange exteriors where chosen as a counterpoint to the blues of the surrounding waters.\n\"I wanted to live downtown but didn't want to give up single-family living,\" says Mark Edward Schmelzer. He didn't have to. Instead, the Omaha jewelry designer traded a suburban house for a 1960s tire store in the city center\u2014transforming it into a polished 10,000-square-foot residence. In place of hydraulic lifts, there is a marble-floored living room. The tire showroom is now home to dining and sitting areas and the kitchen, with gleaming hardware, including a Kohler faucet, and a gourmet cook's requisite Sub-Zero refrigerators. \"I wanted it more finished than a typical loft,\" he says of the d\u00E9cor.\n\"The Idea for my house,\" says Schmelzer, \"was open space that I use every day\u2014clean, Modern, with a d\u00E9co influence.\" Fifteen-foot-tall windows offer a view of the city skyline; a home theater lies at the far end of the room.\nA seating area near the dining room and kitchen occupies what used to be the tire store's showroom.\nTwenty-foot-tall ceilings distinguish the living area, which \"used to be a tire bay with lifts,\" says Schmelzer.\nA simple principle guided Steve Toedebusch as he remodeled his 1945 Cliff May house in Palm Springs, California: \"I felt it should be more open,\" he reports. So the interior designer reconfigured rooms and emphasized the 4,700-square-foot residence's connection to the outdoors, ultimately bringing it closer to May's original vision. To link the loggia, which he extended during the course of the work, to the adjacent living room and the rest of the interiors, he added sandblasted beams and covered the floors in the same stone; to integrate the loggia with the surrounding gardens, he chose shades of green, among them a Cowtan &amp;amp; Tout stripe.\nToedebusch used a mixture of styles in the living room \"to create a comfortable, but sophisticated, look.\"\nThe designer aimed for \"an elegant, casual look\" for the master bedroom, which looks out towards the pool.\nThe pool area and garden. The columns and spa were added during the remodel; the rooflines evolved through the years."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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