[from cville Abode, May 2011]

Imagine standing in a house’s second-floor corridor. What comes to mind? How about large windows overlooking the house’s biggest vista, smaller windows into one bedroom, and clerestory windows overhead? Now throw in a tall, sloped ceiling, exposed trusses, and a view over a railing into the kitchen below. Then add various inspirations and references: Caribbean island houses, European monasteries, and barns, among them.

At this point, you’ve got something like the upstairs corridor in Bill and Nicole Sherman’s Free Union house—as unlike a standard closed-in hallway as it could be. “This is another volume of space. You don’t just pass through,” says Bill Sherman, who designed the house with input from Nicole. “You end up hanging out and talking.”