Dr. Noble and his Max Cart displayat ECRI Institute in 2008
Designer: Simon Koumjian
Production Team: Simon Koumjian III, with Simon Koumjian Associates
Located in Gladwyne, PA, a suburb of Philadelphia - the 3,600 sq. ft. residence was the first underground house to be built in Pennsylvania last century. The residence is set into the property’s north facing sloped hill bordering a flood plain, overlooking a luscious forest area. This site location and orientation prevented passive solar design, yet building underground still deserved serious consideration, despite the north facing site.
The choice in 1978 to live underground near Philadelphia, including giving up the use of oil and gas to heat the house was courageous and visionary for its time. Among several innovations, the air-tight wood burning stove worked efficiently with a reversible heat pump-for cooling during the summer using well water, which was then returned back into a stream-bed to recharge the water table.
The owner, Dr. Joel Nobel and the founder of ECRI (Emergency Care Research Institute), requested an unusual merger of traditional design elements with contemporary underground construction methods. His wife wanted an 'old-fashioned' traditional house style with lots of natural light. Therefore the entry is designed as a stone tower with a spiral stair leading to a second-floor circular library-writer’s room, which provides 360-degree views of the surrounding landscape vistas and roof garden for Mrs. Nobel, a journalist at the time. The house’s interior spaces are bright with sunlight, complimented by brick arches, plaster walls, and Mexican tile floors- its landscape views from every room give no sense that one inhabits subterranean spaces.
Their first evening in the underground home was New Year’s Eve into 1980 – it represented not only a real symbolic transition in time and place, but to their commitment to energy conservation and greater independence from the utility companies.
Dr. Joel Nobel, the founder of ECRI - see link below
