Historic Farmhouses Inspired Our 2024 Idea House

For more than 35 years, we’ve partnered with the South’s best designers, architects, builders, and developers to produce homes that celebrate the Southern lifestyle and the latest innovations in residential design. In case you missed the announcement last month, our 2024 Idea House is currently under construction in Kiawah River, a coastal community just 20 miles from historic Charleston, South Carolina. Now, we’re pulling back the curtain a little more, sharing insights from this year’s talented team. 

The Inspiration

Because our Idea House is situated in a special enclave across the street from Kiawah River Farm (which features produce and flower fields, as well as a goatery), our architects, led by Kirsten Schoettelkotte of MHK Architecture, were asked to design with respect for the area’s longstanding agrarian character.

“We immediately started looking at historic farmhouses throughout the Lowcountry,” recalls Schoettelkotte. “I went on a drive with my husband to Helen, Georgia. We took all the backroads we could just to see what’s still standing, what’s still around, to really get a sense of what the old farmsteads look like.” 

Beyond the agrihood’s guidelines, an historic-feeling farmhouse just felt appropriate for the locale, says Schoettelkotte. “Johns Island [the location of the Kiawah River community] has always been a farming area because the soils are so much better.”

The Historic Farmhouse

In referencing historic farmhouses, both on her rural drive and her deep dives into the South Carolina Picture Project [a visual database of state landmarks, including homes], Schoettelkotte recognized a hallmark of these farmsteads: Most were established first with a main house (many of which had porches for water-shedding and breeze-catching relief in pre-A/C days) and then grew over time, with additions tacked on, out-buildings constructed, and porches enclosed with the arrival of central heating and air. 

She and her team have followed that thread in the designing of the 2024 Idea House, anchoring it with a main structure with three dormers and a wraparound porch, then layering in a taller right wing of the house, as well as a detached carriage house that’s connected to the house via a short covered walkway. “It helps tell a story,” says Schoettelkotte. “That was always the goal for me. I want somebody to walk up to this house and feel like the trees grew around it… like if the house had been there forever, this is how it would have grown.”

It’s hard to deny the enduring appeal of these classic Lowcountry farmhouses, and the architect has her own ideas about why. “First, it’s familiar. We all recognize it, and home should be familiar,” she says. “I think, second, it’s simple; it’s not putting on airs.” It’s also about the feeling it evokes, the “hard-earned chilling out” that happens when you’re sitting in a rocker on the farmhouse’s front porch, she says: “You’re in the shade; you’ve had a long, hard day; and this is where everything kind of settles and you can just breathe.”