STORY KIM CARPENTER PHOTOGRAPHY JEFFREY BEBEE
490 tons of granite and ductwork make this residence unique in Nebraska.
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t’s either the “House of A-ha's” or the “House of Ducts,” depending on your viewpoint. One is readily evident in this 5,600-square-foot residence’s softly curving Italian-inspired architecture. The other remains invisible but nonetheless omnipresent thanks to nearly a million pounds of granite in a five-foot pit beneath the three-car garage. Both combine to create a home that stands out in form and function. Its form is a regal, contemporary take on a 16th-century master; its function involves a rock storage system that controls the home’s temperature via an elaborate labyrinth of 200-plus ducts. This perfect marriage of form and function was devised by Pat and John de Groot, themselves married for 53 years. The couple set out with two design goals. Pat, a facilitator for gifted education in the Omaha Public Schools, wanted a home like she first envisioned in a high school sketchbook. John, a senior consultant fellow in strategic assessment and analysis at the Peter Kiewit Institute, wanted an energy efficient home that could produce its own heat. “People said, ‘Oh boy, this is going to be the end of your marriage,’” Pat recalls, amused. “But we had an arrangement. I would do the interior, and John would do all of the mechanical and the exterior.” The couple stuck to the arrangement and brought in an expert team of more than 10 people to assist with the design process. “It was years of planning and meeting after meeting,” Pat says. “They would come up with fabulous ideas, and I would say, ‘Yes, but how’s that going to look?’” Lead designer Eddy Santamaria of Contrivium Design & Urbanism played a key role in that look.
“I welcomed the challenge,” he says. “It allowed us to have a beautiful dialogue. They were willing to learn, and I learned from them.” Santamaria accommodated both his clients’ interests through the work of Andrea Palladio, a 16th-century Italian architect noted for his grand villas, palaces and churches. “Pat and John really understood his methodology and his built environment,” he says. For the de Groots, that built environment translated into a symmetry that flows from the rounded arches of the exterior into the soft curves of the soaring, vaulted interior. “When you design a house, it shouldn’t just be an exterior address or a cover to what’s inside,” Santamaria emphasizes. “There needs to be contemplation between what you do in the interior and what you do in the exterior. There has to be a connection to the spaces.” The de Groots created that connection with a formal vestibule that leads into a grand room, which in turn echoes the entry’s vaulted roundness. That’s where the “House of A-ha's” derives its name. “When you enter the vestibule, you say, ‘A-ha!’” John explains. “Then you enter the living room and say ‘A-ha!’ again.” The “a-ha's” come as much from the architecture as the design scheme of soft earth tones, dark woods, gleaming Italian marble and lustrous accents of silver and gold. It’s a calming environment, one that harkens to the dream home Pat sketched in home economics as a teen. “Way back when I was in high school, the Sisters of St. Francis insisted that we learn how to be ‘domesticated women.’ We had to design our own house. As we were getting ready to move, I found my little book, and I almost fell over. The interior of my house was like my sketch.”
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