At age 12, most boys still aspire to be professional baseball players and astronauts. Not Tom Tretheway. He knew he was going to be an architect, a calling that brought him to Auburn in August of 1991. A transfer student from Boston, Tretheway quickly found himself on the ground level of something huge.
Tretheway was one of the first students to do his fifth year thesis project at the Rural Studio. On a team with Ruard Veltman and Steve Durden, the team helped forge one of the most memorable and creative projects in Rural Studio history. Their collective labor yielded The Yancey Chapel, a chapel in Greensboro, Ala. that is made of used tires. Even today, Tretheway credits his unique, hands-on Auburn experience with his real world success.
“If I can built a chapel out of tires then there isn’t anything I can’t do,” Tretheway said.
After his graduation from Auburn in 1995, Tretheway spent his time bouncing around with different firms across the southeast gaining experience in master planning, commercial design and interior design.
“I knew I had to pay my dues,” Tretheway said. “There were very few green firms—I knew I had to be patient about it. The best route was to pursue an office career first and then pursue other opportunities.”
Just four years after his graduation, he created his own opportunity by opening Studio A, a design firm in Charlotte, North Carolina.
This was quickly followed by Studio A-1 and eventually a development company called Summit 3 in 2005. One of their first projects was to take 14 acres and build it 100 percent green.
Building green has gotten significantly easier in the past four years because of trailblazers like Tretheway. Other people took notice, and headlines from The New York Times followed. It was this unique work that eventually landed him as the principal architect for Country Living’s 2009 House of the Year.
“They selected us off of four floor plan and sketches,” he said. “I did a very very rough sketch of the elevation.”
The entire building process was taped for the DIY (Do-it-Yourself) Network (see below for a link to the video online).
When Tretheway’s team broke ground in February on the project, the West Virginian Mountains proved to be a perilous place to work, especially on a tight schedule. Not only did the custom 3,022 square foot home have to be done on time for a photo shoot, the house had to accommodate more than 600 boxes of knick knacks and interior design pieces selected by the Country Living editors.
“There was a lot of high stress,” Tretheway said. “Country Living swamped us with work.” Work like taking inventory of everything in the house, from furniture to antiques to, literally, everything.
Another design obstacle Tretheway had to overcome was making such a large space–four stories, elevator and stairwell included—feel like home. With such an expanse, air circulation became the biggest challenge. Making sure the environment didn’t feel barren was another.
“That is one successful design criteria I feel like I achieved. Whether you are one person in the house, or you have 15 people in the house it is comfortable,” Tretheway said. “It just works. The room size and proportion is very critical. I feel like I pulled it off.”
The result of Tretheway’s hard work resulted in a one-of-a-kind living space, worthy to be called House of the Year. And while it may seem like a far cry from a chapel made of tires, it’s the latter experience at the Rural Studio that keeps him grounded.

For a slide show of the house, please visit: http://www.countryliving.com/homes/house-tours/house-of-the-year/hoy-photos-0209?click=main_sr

To watch the DIY Network special featuring Tretheway’s house, please visit:
http://www.diynetwork.com/diy/pac_ctnt_988/text/0,2829,DIY_24936_74990,00.html