Rose-colored bricks wrap the exterior of this house; pale pink Fiora DeRosa marble covers its floors.
Its lines are low, sweeping prairie-style, plus the curves and zig-zag corners of art deco accents.
This one-of-a-kind house is a work of art, designed 30 years ago by West Bloomfield architect Robert Bryce. “A trophy house,” said Realtor Fadl Badreddine. Back then it was featured in the Free Press, especially for its unusual color — pink, or to say it more poetically — rose. Now it is for sale at $2.75 million.
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The house still has the spare beauty Bryce designed three decades ago, with emphasis on fine materials, space and clean lines more than objects.
There are no lamps, for example, because all lighting is built into the ceilings. There are almost no end tables to hold those nonexistent lamps.
There are no free-standing chests of drawers because volumes of storage are built into each room.
Take the great room as it is now for an example, though of course new owners will change it. It measures 30 feet by 32 feet, with a sight line two times that long.
Just seven pieces of furniture sit in that big space — all either white or clear. The focus is a grand piano that’s dramatic clear acrylic. Beyond that are two overstuffed white chairs, two Asian white chairs, one white marble table and one glass table.
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These sit in front of walls that are huge sheets of glass, 1 inch thick, joined with clear corners.
Two glamorous white staircases sweep from the second floor to first and then to the lower level.
The spare glamor continues through the house. For example, the owners did not skimp with the Fiora DeRose marble, Badreddine said. Besides the public rooms, they put it in the laundry room, the mud room, walk-in closets, the back hall and bathrooms. In some baths, the marble goes up and covers the walls. They used a great deal of glass block and often combined it subtly with fiber-optic lighting, which can glow in pastel colors. Such changeable lighting is around the base of the kitchen cabinets, for example, around the bottom of a bathtub and around the ceiling of the dining room. The lower level is a walk-out that’s as fully finished as the floors above it. It’s wide open with a living space and a fireplace, a full kitchen, a bar, a billiards room and a gym. It even has a wooden dance floor. The approach to the house’s exterior is striking. It is low and graceful with two rose-colored pillars that support an overhead bridge. To enter the house you pass through the pillars and under the bridge.
