Indian Bean is a nonworking farm in rural Kentucky, surrounded by tobacco fields and studded with copses of high-domed catalpa trees that lend the property its name. It’s not an especially fancy part of the Kentucky countryside, but a region best known for its hats and horses and high-stakes socializing. That’s why our clients—a surprising, thoughtful, deeply engaged couple who we’ve worked with now on three houses—fell in love with it. By the time we started work at the farm, we’d been collaborating for some years on the family’s house in Louisville, developing a rapport and mutual trust in one another’s interests and perspectives. Our close, almost filial bond allowed us to develop a shorthand through which we could experiment and explore together. We already knew very well what kind of pillows they liked, for instance, exactly the sort of basic but essential detail you learn the first time you work with someone. Here, we could make bigger moves, take bigger risks, build bigger dreams.
