NEWS

CUSTOM CREATIONS

Construction runs in Evan Boxwell’s blood. Because his father was a custom home builder in Colorado, he learned the business from the ground up. After graduating from ASU with a degree in construction management—and following a brief stint with a build firm—he began buying, fixing and selling foreclosed properties. Today, he specializes in custom builds, ranging from contemporary designs to modern farmhouses.

“When I first started out here, everything looked the same—it was stucco Santa Barbara or Spanish-looking houses. And when you go to the suburbs, you see the same home over and over again,” he says. “There was a need for modern architecture. Something cool and fresh. Something that I would want to live in. So basically that’s what I started building.”

Boxwell’s personal home, in the Pierson Place Historic District, is a 1,530-square-foot contemporary, white-stucco design with wood and steel accents. Compatible in scale and material to neighboring homes, its clean lines, floor-to-ceiling windows and steel arbor-covered walkway stand out. Interest in the house was so great that he ended up developing three additional homes of similar style on the same street.

“I’m all for restoring existing historic homes to their original splendor, but if you’re building new in a historic neighborhood, you don’t want the house to look like all the others because its not of the same time period,” he says.

One of the biggest trends Boxwell sees for the future of home design is technology integration. “Voice command is going to be huge,” he predicts. “For example, using Alexa to control your whole house for automation and climate control.” As for the design of the home, “modern is where everything is going. The classic adobe works well out here, but the very contemporary glass, steel and concrete structure just fits in well with the landscape.”