Photographs by Kyle Huberty
Lives Well Lived
The hammock hangs from hardware anchoring the trellis. The hearth’s soot-black Belden Bricks were purchased secondhand on Facebook Marketplace. The vintage Iranian rug was a gift from a friend, and the baskets were thrifted. “The jankier the store, the better,” says Morna Powell. “You want to walk out of there feeling like you have to wash your hands.”
The results of architect Kyle Huberty’s StrengthsFinder assessment would surprise no one: He excels at winning over others. Two minutes in his company, and you find yourself climbing on board with whatever wild idea he’s psyched about that moment—be it building a better suburb or rethinking the entire concept of communal living.
The thing about Huberty, though, is that he’s not just a talker; he’s a doer: the kind of guy who dreams big but has the drive (and pied-pipercharisma) to pull off the seemingly impossible while inspiring those around him to follow his lead.
A willingness to act on a hypothetical is what led Huberty to transform his own home—a 112-year-old triplex near Indian Mounds Regional Park in St. Paul—into a guinea pig for cohousing. The property is a living social experiment, providing both shelter and office space to Huberty and his wife, Elsie, a clothing designer for Hackwith Design; their toddler, Birdie Lou; Huberty’s childhood best friend, graphic designer and illustrator David Rollyn Powell; David’s wife, Morna, a clothing and product designer who also happens to be Elsie’s younger sister; the Powells’ three-month-old son, George; an Australian cattle dog named Trout; and a 50-something single tenant who no longer wants the hassle of maintaining her own place.
When the pandemic hit and both couples started working from home, they knew they needed more space. Huberty’s solution: flip a dumpy garage behind the triplex into a 600-square-foot Northwoods cabin–inspired “creative escape”—a playfully lived-in space where everyone could work but also hang out and share ideas (or beers) around a crackling fire. He did it on a budget of $26,000 by enlisting the help of friends and family and sleuthing out bargains on Facebook Marketplace.
At his core, Huberty believes that a “shared life is a better life” and that Americans have become painfully isolated in their quest for independence. He thinks a lot about urban density and is intrigued by cohousing models in Sweden and Tanzania that prioritize community above self and take a village approach to raising children and caring for elders. “We’ve lost our village mindset,” he says. “I want to live in a meaningful, intentional community.” By sacrificing a little space and privacy, he’s able to recreate that village experience in St. Paul—where his support network is “literally a door or a staircase away.”
Sharing land and resources is not only an economic necessity, says Huberty; it’s a potential solution to the housing crisis. While many understandably pine for single-family homes with rolling lawns, it’s not the most efficient use of space. “There’s nothing wrong with wanting to have a really nice home,” says Huberty. “But what if a million-dollar home was designed for two families instead of one? That would be a soft but radical improvement.”
By living his vision, he’s seeing firsthand what design and architectural challenges he may have to solve in the future. “We have three families and four companies on a single lot,” he says. “The yield that has come from this place is great. Why don’t we look at every lot with that possibility?”
Such wide-eyed idealism is what inspired Huberty to launch his own practice after spending years in the trenches at Minneapolis architecture firm RoehrSchmitt. Just three months old, Saunter Architecture Workshop is charting two parallel paths—one focused on recreational architecture (think: cabins in the Boundary Waters that make canoeing more accessible to children with special needs) and the other on progressive cohousing. His triple bottom line weighs social, economic, and environmental sustainability in equal measure, and he’s already working on a conceptual project for a cluster development in Stillwater.
“Can this be scalable? I don’t know,” he admits. “Right now, it’s about finding brave clients who share my vision.” If his StrengthsFinder test is any indication, he will be just fine.
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Living Room
The old-growth Douglas fir used for the flooring, shelving, and tambour wall slats came from a decommissioned munitions plant in Minnesota. Huberty bought the wood off Facebook Marketplace; ditto the cast-iron Jøtul stove, which he adores because it forces him to slow down and appreciate the effort and intentionality it takes to build a proper wood-burning fire. (He gathers and chops his own firewood, of course.)
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Overhead Space
The surfboards hanging from the studio ceiling were custom-shaped in California—one by Jeff Hull of Resist Surfboards Mfg. and the other by Bill “Blinky” Hubina of Ventura Surf Shop. Morna and her husband, David, hoist them into place.
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Rehomed Goods
The vintage fridge is an estate sale find. The kitchen countertop is a Husky workbench with double drawers. The Laura Davidson office chairs were purchased secondhand from a local design studio that did away with its physical office during the pandemic.
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Well Rounded
Scandinavian-modern North Shore cabins—with their abundance of real wood and natural light—informed Huberty’s vision for the shared space. His most ambitious undertaking, however, was the unusually curved ceiling. It began as a DIY project but eventually had to be torn out and redone by a professional drywaller. Storage shelves and closets, tucked behind the slatted wood walls on both sides of the building, are accessed by doors built into the design.
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A New Outlook: Before
Before Huberty retrofitted the garage behind his St. Paul triplex into a 600-square-foot communal workspace, it was little more than a glorified storage unit—framed but not insulated and depressingly dark.
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A New Outlook: After
Huberty scored double-pane Marvin windows at Bauer Brothers Salvage in Minneapolis and brick patio pavers at a landfill in St. Paul. Roycroft Bronze Green Sherwin-Williams, sherwin-williams.com
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Developed Over Time
Custom-built shelving holds Elsie’s fabrics and Huberty’s architecture books, as well as his most prized possession: a Steve Irwin bobblehead. “He’s my idol,” says the architect, who admires the Australian zookeeper’s passion and sincerity. The wool wall art was made by Elsie and Morna’s grandmother, a talented crafter who taught the sisters how to knit and crochet when they were children. There is no dedicated play space for the kids right now, but Huberty is thinking of turning a vintage Airstream into a mobile playroom/camper van. “A project for another day,” he laughs.
Design/Renovation: Saunter Architecture Workshop, saunterarchitects.com
