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Community Corner

New HGTV Green Home Rooted in Midtown

The home that will be given away to television viewers owes its design and its modern village setting to Midtown.

A new home that's drawing the attention of potential owners nationwide via an HGTV contest owes both its actual design and its modern village setting to Midtown.

Workers have just started grading and laying foundations on a wooded slope in south Fulton County for the HGTV Green Home 2012, which will be the top prize in the cable TV network's fifth annual giveaway.

The home is being built in Serenbe, the 1,000-acre sustainable community in Chattahoochee Hill Country that was founded by Steve Nygren. His name is famous in Midtown as the founder of the Peasant Group of restaurants and the embryo of the Midtown Alliance.

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Architect Steve Kemp, founder of Kemp Hall Studio in West Midtown, designed the house.

The look will be a "modern farmhouse," he said, though the design is a secret for now. He hinted that it evokes Southern vernacular designs, but is not simply a replica of an old house either. Nor is it something that will look dated in a few years.

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He did say that the house blurs the line between indoor and outdoor spaces and is "flexible," meaning the size will feel appropriate for a young family, a growing family, and empty nesters alike. It'll have 3 bedrooms, 2.5 baths at about 2,300 square feet, but "is designed specifically to live like a much bigger house than the heated and cooled space would suggest." 

Windows will be placed to catch maximal breezes and the design uses the site slope and the sun to contribute to making the house less energy-intensive.

The house materials will be green, too. Kemp can't talk about details yet but said that in general, green building means sustainable local sourcing. For example, wood is best if it comes from a timber farm, not a raid on a forest. 

Nygren, who left Midtown for Serenbe more than a decade ago, said many of the people there made the same migration -- leaving urbanized Atlanta for a place where you can walk through the woods to go to the coffee shop.

"It's like Virginia Highlands in the woods," he said. "People crave that connection to nature."

The Green Home contest will be open for entries between April 12 and June 1 next year.

A blog about the construction is on HGTV's website.

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