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Homes

A comfy home away from home

The members of the Zeta Tau Alpha sorority at USF wanted a Florida feel in their new home without the kitsch, so they turned to an interior designer.

By ELIZABETH BETTENDORF
Published October 7, 2005

TAMPA - The moment she set foot in the Zeta Tau Alpha house at the University of South Florida, designer Karen Brown knew she faced an unusual challenge: create a comfortable living space that felt like Florida minus the kitsch; a gathering place that looked feminine but without the usual sorority accoutrements.

Such as?

"A grand piano - we definitely didn't want a grand piano," explains USF senior and Zeta chapter president, Adria LaCava, of the house located in USF's Greek Village.

The sorority, which has dozens of chapters nationwide, was founded in 1898 at Longwood College in Farmville, Va., but a local chapter didn't arrive at USF until 2003. It was officially chartered last year, and members moved into its tin-roofed, tropical-style building in August, just in time for fall rush.

"We had a chapter meeting and decided we didn't want a lot of flowers or pastels," says LaCava. "We just wanted it to be comfortable."

That it is.

With its crescent shaped pumpkin sofas, fun and playful-looking upholstered easy chairs, a wall mural of wetlands and Florida sky by a well-known Sarasota artist, the main living room exudes a sense of place and style. Her goal was to achieve a look that was not "overtly feminine but definitely not masculine."

Think funky meets modern.

"I wanted to mix fabrics without it feeling too busy," Brown says. "The key pieces are in solids."

Brown, who owns her own firm, Karen Brown Designs, was a 2004 finalist on HGTV's Designer's Challenge and a former Tampa Bay Buccaneers cheerleader. She's also a USF alum.

She competed with other local designers for the job and was approved by a consortium of Zeta alumni, including Deborah Sickman, 40, local house association president and a Zeta alum herself.

"I literally found her both by looking through the phone book and from references," Sickman recalls. "After I met her and saw her work, my gut told me she would be a really good fit."

Though she wasn't in a sorority, Brown understood the challenges of accommodating the varied tastes of dozens of busy girls who live in the house and share one large living space. Zeta boasts about 94 members on the USF campus, 27 of whom live in the house. Brown also had only a few weeks to design and furnish the building, previously occupied by a fraternity.

Preplanning and lots of suggestions from chapter members made her job a lot easier.

"I read all kinds of written suggestions as I was planning," she says. "I knew they wanted a laid-back feeling, so I wanted to create several different seating areas for the girls to cluster."

In fact, she managed to fit in several conversational groupings including one with whimsical oversized wing chairs, another with a cushioned ottoman that doubles as a cocktail table and storage unit, and a third that incorporates a dining table and chairs.

The primary seating area incorporates an entertainment center that can be closed for sorority meetings and opened for weekly group gatherings to watch the sisters' collective favorite television show, MTV's Laguna Beach.

Brown also worked in turquoise throughout - Zeta's official color. She managed to pull it in to the entryway, painting the walls a muted steel gray and turquoise, a color she even pulled into the slate, custom built wall fountain. A mosaic of the sorority crest and symbol, a five-point crown, punctuate the Mexican tile floors. The black, white, blue and yellow mosaic was created by another Tampa Bay area artist, David Khalil.

Upstairs she created a communication center and mailboxes using sea grass basketry and wooden dividers.

Throughout the primary living areas, she stuck with dark wood, both in the furnishings and wide-slat plantation shutters that cover the windows. Even accent pieces like the aged-looking prints of shell specimens are framed in dark wood. A contemporary wall lamp, made of dark twig material, adds mood lighting and what Brown calls an overall "not too sweetsie look."

The new house and its hip, low-key decor was feted at a dedication ceremony Sunday afternoon, an event that drew the sorority's national leaders. It's nice to have a place to come home to, members say, especially after living spread out in apartments and dorms.

Explains USF junior Kelly Robinson, 20: "I just love how we've gotten to know more sisters than last year, when we didn't have a home."

Megan Latchford, 20, who commuted from South Tampa last year, agrees: "This is our home, a place where we can all live together, a place we can meet and hang out. It's our own place to play."

For her part, Karen Brown says the decorating went without a hitch, except for the pumpkin sofas that hadn't arrived by rush, but no matter, because "the room was wall to wall girls."

The sorority's national organization as well as its national housing corporation are seriously committed to well-designed and comfortable housing for members everywhere, Sickman says.

"We wanted comfortable, classy and cheerful, a real home away from home," Sickman explains. "We also wanted something that would still look good five to 10 years down the road."

Overall, the Zeta sisters say they love their new house and Florida-style decor.

"I've gotten lots of positive comments," Brown says. "I mean, I want to live here."

[Last modified October 6, 2005, 08:25:09]