Eager to plant their roots more deeply into their new hometown since relocating from L.A., experiential graphics designer Youn Choi and award-winning architect Doug Pierson, AIA, partners in life and founding partners of pod architecture + design (pod a+d) in Carrboro, have designed an uber-modern, 2500-square-foot house for their family of four that they’re about to build on a site that poses a host of challenges.

The site is a 1.2 acre swatch with a 12-acre preserved woodland area. No one had purchased the lot for a long time because it presents so many challenges, including a year-round 100-foot creek setback, an oddly shaped buildable area, a steep hillside, dense forest coverage, and adjacency to a flood plain.

Yet Pierson and Choi didn’t see those issues as limiting. They saw them as inspirational. In fact, the land informed the custom design of the future 2500-square-foot, three-bedroom, three-bath modern house that they will share with their two young children. On a different site, it would be a completely different house.

As a result, they’ve partially embedded it into the wooded hillside and opened it up to the natural meadow and creek at the lower elevations. They’ve used the strict construction limitations to establish a design that follows the usable land contours, reflects the climb in elevation by “hopping” up to the higher elevation, then anchors itself back to the top.

Pierson, whose family hails from North Carolina, and Choi, a native of South Korea, are reusing the Southern yellow pine trees that will be felled to make room for the house. They’re having all of them milled locally then returned to the site to be repurposed as cabinetry and architectural woodwork.

According to the design, this modern, sustainable house will be a composition of sleek, rectilinear forms, at once soaring and grounded. Huge expanses of glass will frame views of the meadow, forest, and creek and allow natural light to fill the interior. The foundation and retaining walls will be polished concrete block. A terrace on the upper level will have glass overlook guardrails.

They haven’t decided on the exterior material yet. If the past is precedent, however,  it will be corrugated metal. But Choi is still searching for a new cladding material that can be continuously wrapped around the house’s form and respond to the site and the climate.

Inside, this modern house will feature exposed structural steel, polished concrete floors over radiant heating, quartz countertops, and the repurposed southern yellow pine for custom cabinetry.

To underscore their commitment to their new region, Pierson and Choi have hired an all-local construction and supplies team.

The Choi-Pierson house should be completed by August of 2019.