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Homes

Linden Hills

living room of linden hills home
Photo by Karen Melvin

September 2008

By Shawn Gilliam

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Nina Rothschild Utne

Futurefit is an expression Nina Rothschild Utne recently coined and trademarked. The idea came to her as she ruminated about streamlining what she calls her “energy hog 1912 home.” Unlike retrofit, which she likens to a Band-Aid, Futurefit suggests a shift to grace and efficiency on multiple levels—from BTUs to design to social organizing. “If things work the way I’m hoping, I’ll have geothermal [heating and cooling] installed in the next month,” she says.

Progressive ideas are part of Utne’s chemistry. Nearly twenty-five years ago, she and ex-husband Eric Utne founded Utne Reader, a magazine that has “been a sort of cultural beacon,” she says, covering environmentalism, alternative medicine, spirituality, yoga, and other topics now part of mainstream culture. (Utne recently sold the bimonthly magazine, but still serves as editor at large and writes a column.)

Utne’s ideals extend to her volunteer work: She helped found women’s peace organization Code Pink and Minneapolis’s Headwaters Foundation for Justice, and she was a founder of the City of Lakes Waldorf School, which sons Sam, now twenty-six, Oliver, twenty-two, and Eli, seventeen, all attended. But life has always centered on home. “The way it’s designed—by pure luck—many kids and dogs can run in circles on every floor except the basement, so it absorbs activity,” Utne says. “It was a wonderful place for the boys to grow up and now for them to come home to.”

The house has always held extended family, she says, noting that ex-husband Eric now lives two blocks down the street. “Our family was never nuclear because stepfamilies, which we have always been, are permeable by nature,” she says. “We’re just evolving into our next form of family.”

With change constantly in the air, Utne is considering ways to Futurefit the house beyond the geothermal system. “It’s a big house designed for a big family, so part of the challenge now is to see if it can reincarnate for another purpose. I’ve got big dreams for Futurefit—maybe they’ll grow here.”

What Caught Our Eye

  • Bright Spaces. At least part of the house is light and airy no matter the time of day or year, Utne says. Much of that sunny quality comes thanks to a renovation with architect Tom Ellison seventeen years ago that opened the kitchen to the breakfast room, created a master suite and an office, and boosted the number of windows in the home. Utne recently refreshed the spaces by repainting them in bright hues with low-VOC Yolo paint, which she purchased at Natural Built Home.
  • Pieces with Meaning. “Most of the home’s contents are sort of accidental,” Utne says. “Yes, things have meanings and stories, and certainly some I’d prefer weren’t broken, but the house is made to be lived in—particularly since the boys generate lots of airborne objects.” Utne’s favorite pieces that have been spared from total destruction include a slightly damaged wire-and-glass tree on a mirrored base (shown here on the living room coffee table; the piece usually sits high on the entry foyer chest) that once belonged to her grandmother. “It was always on her dining room table, and I have no idea how old it is or where it came from,” Utne says. “I just liked the way the light hit it.”
  • Room for Music. Son Eli’s guitar is one of a number of musical instruments put to frequent use for impromptu jamming in the Utne house. (Besides Eli, stepson Leif, who now lives in Seattle, is also a musician.) It fits in beautifully with books, photographs of family and friends, and art objects that include a wire sculpture of family dog Ozzy—now buried in the side yard—made by Eric.
  • Neighborhood Ties. The family prizes living within easy walking distance of a strong neighborhood. “Being close to Linden Hills and the lakes allowed the kids lots of childhood freedom, which was important to me,” she says. “And we’ve got this amazing backyard, so it feels like we’re in the country.”
  • Calm Retreat. Utne’s second-level bedroom faces tall trees in the backyard. Once a rabbit’s warren of spaces such as a sleeping porch, a “shaking porch” (from which maids would have shaken rugs to the yard), and small closets, it now serves as her personal getaway. Bedside lamps from her grandmother illuminate a wall draped in silk that beautifully contrasts with a simple handmade bedcover.

Home Tours 2008

Linden Hills home for Home Tours 2008

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