Face-lift leaves house topsy-turvy - Design challenges classic aesthetics

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Architecture students Saturday gave this West Side home a new twist.

The house at 15 S. Putnam St. looks like no other in the city, in the country and perhaps in the world — at least according to Frank Fantauzzi, an architecture professor at the University at Buffalo. The home got a face-lift at the hands of Fantauzzi’s graduate students as part of a semester- long project overseeing the revitalization of the West Side house.
What makes the house unique, Fantauzzi said, is the front. His students rotated it 90 degrees.
That means the front of the house was detached, turned on its side and reattached to the frame.
The effect is most dramatic in the windows, which are rectangular and stood upright before the face-lift.
Now the windows are horizontal, rather than vertical.
“By moving the front of the house, turning it on the side, it challenges conformity and convention,” said Peter Roetzer, one of 14 graduate students working on the project.
“It’s never been done. Maybe it’s the first of its kind in the world,” Fantauzzi said. “It’s very avant-garde.”
In June 2006, the 2z-story house was condemned. Since then, it has been vandalized, looted and became uninhabitable.
Graduate students began the project eight months ago with three goals in mind: to provide an experimental educational opportunity for students to learn about practical aspects of design; to rehabilitate the dilapidated home, making it habitable for the homeowner; and to add to the general well-being of the West Side community.
“We wanted to save a building in the city and give kids hands-on experience,” Fantauzzi said.
“We’re reincorporating the house with the rest of South Putnam Street while making an effort to experiment with the house’s structural and aesthetic potential, Fantauzzi said.
Roetzer described what the dwelling looked like before renovation efforts began.
“There were leaks in the roof. Garbage was waist-high because people just started dumping stuff,” he said. “And it needed major structural repairs.”
The first stage of the project was for the graduate students to identify a home and then come up with design proposals, Roetzer explained.
Then, they had to gut the dwelling and make it structurally sound before renovation work could begin.
The final stage, which came Saturday, included rotating the visage.
Now, it will be up to the homeowner, Dennetta Stikkel, to hire a contractor to finish the house, including the floor and walls.
Once that’s completed, Stikkel is not sure whether she will sell the house or make it her own home.
“I may stay,” said Stikkel, who has a 7-month-old son. “I live in Angola. I just bought a house there.”
As for the work the students did, Stikkel was pleased.
“This is a total difference,” she said. “Just to see this all come together is amazing.”

dswilliams@buffnews.com

Fonte: City & Region