At Home: Elk View

By Hannah Van Vlack

The new eco-friendly community of Elk View is situated just 12 minutes from downtown Asheville, the heart of a city overflowing with arts and culture. Comprised of 25 single-family homes, this community offers a profound connection with nature even with its central location. A product of AIBL Property Group and design firm Schiller Projects, the Elk View community is driven by the landscape, fitting homes into its dense forest and steep mountains while taking care of that same land through sustainable practices.

Just as Elk View fits right into the Asheville terrain, it fits well into the vision and work of Schiller Projects. “We have a focus on sustainable and high-performance projects,” says Aaron Schiller, founder of the design firm. “We design unique, high-performance homes across the United States as well as office, hotel, hospitality and retail spaces. Our critical focus is the client and finding unique expressions that reflect their identity and region.”
Black Mountain College, whose faculty and students would go on to heavily influence the landscape of modern art, served as the inspiration for the design of Elk View. Practices that both connect with nature and utilize natural materials guided the design as well, ensuring an active relationship with the natural surroundings.

“Elk View is wonderfully unique in both scope and approach,” Schiller says. “A typical housing development would ‘stamp out’ a single design across an area. Instead, we approached this 100-acre, heavily wooded, steep and varied site as 25 unique challenges set to us by the natural landscape. Each site has a different relationship to the road, to light and air, to views and to the forest around it; therefore, each response is different. Because we were also invested in driving the project through a sustainable performance lens, we bound the designs with common building components.”

The challenging geography of Elk View required Schiller Projects to depart from traditional construction methods in favor of modern techniques. Panels were used for the roof and walls of the homes instead of transporting large materials or custom-built components. This process not only functioned in harmony with the terrain but made the assembly process more precise and efficient. The materials used in framing each home were sourced within a 70-mile radius in order to minimize the community’s carbon footprint. Additionally, each home is equipped with a custom HVAC system and advanced insulated panels, both contributing to greater energy efficiency. “Higher insulation standards and thermal performance,” Schiller says, “mean the internal temperature of the homes is in a more steady state throughout the seasons. It relies less on mechanical support and more on the quality of the envelope to lower the energy consumption and the carbon footprint of the lives lived in each one.” These practices, alongside the balconies, terraces and decks, large windows, and the use of local materials in each home allow residents to truly honor and connect with their environment.

“There is no community like Elk View in Asheville,” Schiller says. “Each homeowner retains their individuality and privacy while also gaining some of the most unique landscape views in the region, views you would typically have to drive to a public overlook or great park to obtain. Collectively, the homes exceed the energy performance standards generally accepted across the region so residents will receive long-term economic benefit as well as joy from these buildings.”

Each home is completely unique, but they all share the same environmentally conscious construction, performance metrics and Schiller Projects’ ambition to build smart. Created with a building standard that exceeds North Carolina Green Building guidelines, Elk View is showcasing how much Schiller Projects values both the stunning environment in Asheville as well as each of its residents.

For more information, visit ElkViewNC.com or call 828.684.5151. Hannah Van Vlack is a senior at Western Carolina University studying Writing and Editing in Professional Environments and Music.