Wittehaus

good design is poetic

A space needs to strive to lift your soul. Otherwise, what’s the point?

good design is intimate

If you touch it, if you so much as look at it, if you walk in it, you need to feel some goosebumps. And so it needs to be created by a caring hand and a compassionate eye.

good design is empathetic

It should know you, reach out to you, invite you in.

good design is simple

It needs to generate its own elegance from paring down its elements to what’s necessary. It needs to make life easier, simplified, less burdened.

good design is less

Save our resources. Add to the world. Don’t take from it. If you can omit it, omit it.

good design is innovative

We seek to see with fresh eyes. To find new answers. To ask new questions.

good design is specific

It’s generated from within, answering a need. It is intentional.

We guide our clients through the entire process of the custom home creation. While the heart of our expertise lies in the design of the home, we assemble a team of experts to address every part of the journey. From finding a property, through the construction, all the way to moving in. We are there every step of the way. We let you pick and choose from a long list of offerings.

Information Sharing

Before we get started we provide all the information for our clients to make the right decision, including whether a custom, high-performing, modern home is the right idea for them in the first place.

Property Search

We will help them find the right property for their home. It all starts there. Without a lot we cannot begin. You have to find a patch of land first - the one you can fall in love with.

Planning

With our Design Goal Review we establish our clients’ dreams and wishes and align them with their pocket book, a time line, and all other demands on their project. We set the goal posts - a plan that will safely carry us through the entire endeavor.

Design

Together with our clients we explore many possibilities in the search for their home. Together we create the house on paper, from scratch - line by line. We explore, try, debate and develop a design that will have a chance to knock them off their feet again and again.

Drawings

After we have figured out how to create the perfect stage for their life, we develop a set of construction drawings. It is the assembly instructions for everyone involved. With these drawings we figure out how to put your home together brick by brick. Through them we share with others how to do it.

3D Renderings

To keep dreaming during the construction we develop 3D renderings of our clients’ home. They can share them with friends and family. Our clients can pull them up whenever they find themselves yearning for the end product.

Modeling

To provide our clients with a tactile experience of how all the bits and pieces come together, form a whole, and nestle into the property, we provide physical models, either 3D-printed or hand made. (Dolls are extra.)

VR

To test-fly their home fully before it gets built we let or clients take it in on a spin with a Virtual Reality walk-through. They get to experience each room to take a gander all around.

Construction

We help our clients select a builder early on to make them part of the team. During the construction we are at everyone’s beck and call to answer questions, make decisions, work out details, and help push the process smoothly over the finish line.

Selections

During the construction we take our clients to showrooms and manufacturing shops, picking and choosing the final materials for the exterior and interior, as well as appliances, fixtures, and colors. The design process never stops. We can help with furniture, window treatment and all the rest.

Interior Design

For some of our Clients we expand on the expertise and bring the right kind of interior designers on board to polish off every last aspect of the living environment.

Engineering

We work with structural engineers on each of our projects to ensure proper sizing and detailing of all structural bits and pieces. If the projects requires it, we even bring a civil and mechanical engineer on board.

Green Measures

To ensure that our homes offer the full gamut of sustainability, based on our clients appetite, we partner with external certification programs and testers, as well as include standard high-performance systems, such as photovoltaic solar panels.

Landscape Design

We work with with Landscape Architects for those projects that require an extension of our design intent into the surroundings of the home.

Moving In

To ensure that the final move is the happiest occasion of the entire process we share our tips and tricks and connect our clients with the right crews.

Life Organization

Last but not least, we have the best life organization experts on call. We ensure that our clients’ smile will firmly remain beaming from within. We want to make sure they will always find the cork screw.

Wittehaus has been honored with many awards, including the Medal & Henry Adams Certificate of Merit by The American Institute of Architects, the North Carolina Modernist Houses Matsumoto Prize, the Build Magazine’s Design & Build Award for “Most Innovative Architecture and Design Firm, North Carolina”, the Communicator Award of Distinction by the Academy of Interactive and Visual Arts, the BLT award for Architectural Design, as well as the Architecture Masterprize.

Forbes Magazine featured Wittehaus on their list of America’s Top 200 Residential Architects.

Over a quarter century of experience in the world of design and construction comes to bear on Toby Witte’s internationally acclaimed work. German by heritage and upbringing, born in Peru, Toby has had the privilege to study and practice architecture, building science, drafting, and construction in Germany and in the USA.

Between various employment with architect, engineering, and construction firms, he graduated cum laude from the David R. Ravin School of Architecture at the University of North Carolina – Charlotte. He ran his previous design/build companies Dialect Design and Qube11 for over a decade until he founded Wittehaus in 2017.

Toby and Wittehaus have been honored with many awards, including the Medal & Henry Adams Certificate of Merit by The American Institute of Architects, the North Carolina Modernist Houses Matsumoto Prize, the Build Magazine’s Design & Build Award for “Most Innovative Architecture and Design Firm, North Carolina”, the Communicator Award of Distinction by the Academy of Interactive and Visual Arts, the BLT award for Architectural Design, as well as the Architecture Masterprize.

Forbes Magazine featured Wittehaus on their list of America’s Top 200 Residential Architects. Among other publications Toby’s homes have been featured by Dwell, Architectural Digest, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal.

His work has been showcased in exhibitions such as at the Lambla Gallery for the UNCC College of Architecture 50th Anniversary Symposium and Gala.

Toby is the distinguished author of Supersizing Bliss - How we have betrayed our Homes and the Happiness we Seek, an award-winning book about how we have come to regard the houses we live in, and ideas and insights on their creation and the opportunity for lasting happiness. Following the success of his book, Toby has been a keynote speaker, as at the AIA Aspire conference in Ashville, NC. He has been a frequent podcast guest, sharing his thoughts about the world of modern homes. 

In the interest to share his expertise with the next generation of architects, Toby has been called back by his alma mater to occasionally help out as a guest lecturer and part-time adjunct professor.

To learn, grow , and contribute, Toby has also been active in the American Institute of Architects, the National Organization of Minority Architects, Brick & Wonder, EntreArchitect, and serves on the board of the Green Built Alliance.

When Toby parks his pencil he lets himself be sucked in by a vibrant family life centered around his wife, an early education teacher, their three powerhouse daughters, and four cats. He cooks, reads, travels, plays two chords on the guitar, and loves a good beer.