2336 Battersea Road

A four-bedroom passive solar home (with a fresh heat pump for the convenience, and the savings, and the new extremes of hot and cold) set on over an acre both landscaped and wild, just north of the city (at Unity Road). There is a serious cross-section of petrified wood set like a portrait into the majestic sandstone fireplace at the heart of this thrillingly off-beat, as well as smartly designed and organized home. There is a sauna tucked away. A towering south-facing solarium of glass segmented by golden beams and overlooking the expansive decks, the fenced vegetable gardens, and the butterfly meadows, the fruit trees. The insulated and drywalled garage has its own pump head, as well as polished concrete floors. It may be enough, all on its own, to see the property sell quickly. The house was built in 1982; Duran Duran were top of the charts. But it feels more a mid-century coming together of stone and wood, concrete and glass. It is as stylish a house as you will see this season.