“The folly is an example of how architecture can transport you to a different place,” says architectural designer James B. Laughlin. When his friend and frequent collaborator, interior designer Heather Chadduck Hillegas, approached him with the idea of constructing a folly at her Birmingham home, she had a specific destination in mind: Montego Bay’s Round Hill Hotel and Villas. It’s where she and her husband, photographer David Hillegas, were married; plus, the Jamaican resort’s dressed-down luxury is like a sublime step back into a 1950s photograph.
The pair agreed that the folly’s architecture must also relate to the Hillegases’s 1920s clapboard Colonial home: “We wanted to honor its historic nature,” says Hillegas. “In a trend-driven world, it was important to lean on classic architecture for the project to remain forever timeless.”
To conjure the Caribbean spirit, she and Laughlin took a scouting trip to Jamaica for an immersive study of Round Hill. “We visited the property to document conditions that we wanted to emulate. For instance, we measured the typical louvered door type and took note of the hardware, assemblies, and materials,” says Laughlin.
The resulting folly is blend of Hillegas’s two worlds. Like the resort’s villas, it’s perched on a hillside and surrounded by lush foliage. Like the adjacent Colonial house, it’s crowned with a standing-seam metal roof. “For the upper portion of the structure, we milled the exact woodwork seen on our home, and for the lower portion we incorporated the columns seen on our front porch,” says Hillegas. Laughlin adds, “We erected the building as one would in the 1920s using putty-glazed windows, one-inch wood siding with mitered corners, and exposed rafter tails. The language of the materiality relates to the existing building on the Hillegases’s property and those tucked into the hills of the resort alike.”
The upper area serves as David’s office, its window like a watchtower above the lap pool. The lower area, used for lounging and entertaining, whisks visitors to Montego Bay with louvered doors (hiding a powder room and a bar), jalousie-style windows, and checkboard limestone flooring. The refined black-and-white palette is a nod to Round Hill’s storied design history, whose decorators include Ralph Lauren and Angelo Donghia. “It evokes a spirit that transports you to a haven in Jamaica while genetically relating to the local vernacular and context,” Laughlin says…