The Miller Residence in East Aurora, New York, was the winner in the Large Residential category in the 2026 ICF Builder Awards. One innovative feature of this project is its ICF-formed concrete green roof system. This home may be one of the first homes in the Buffalo area built with ICF exterior walls from the ground all the way to the roof. The 4,200-square-foot house, built with ICFs from Amvic by Alleguard, sits on a wooded slope with the garage and lower level buried in the hillside beneath a living green roof.

The project was designed and built by Crafted Concepts Architects + Builders, a design-build firm led by architect Phil Gusmano, AIA. The home combines concrete, natural stone veneer, and yellow Alaskan cedar cladding. “The architectural design and exterior finishes are all built utilizing an ICF system,” Gusmano noted.

Inside, eliminating load-bearing interior walls opened up the floor plan completely. Large sliding glass walls connect the living spaces to the balcony and roof garden. A continuous transom window runs the full width of the kitchen, and off the primary suite, a cantilevered balcony projects out from the building with no visible support below.

Sustainability
The home is Net Zero Ready, with the structure laid out for future solar. Heating comes from a radiant floor system installed both in the lower-level slab and beneath the upper-floor trusses. “Paired with the ICF walls, underslab insulation, and concrete floors, this system turns the entire structure into a self-balancing thermal battery,” Gusmano explained, with heat distributed evenly and released slowly. Estimated heating and cooling costs come in under $150 a month, even in Western New York winters.

Cooling is handled by high-efficiency ducted mini-splits, zoned to provide comfort only where it’s needed. The garage roof uses AmDeck Pro ICF to support a full green roof with soil and vegetation, which adds insulation, manages stormwater, and visually disappears into the hillside. Over the main residence, the roof cavity is filled with R-49 closed-cell spray foam, plus an additional inch of continuous rigid insulation above the sheathing. The home also includes LED lighting, Energy Star appliances, and two wood-burning fireplaces.

Complexity and Craftsmanship
Building an all-ICF structure with no interior load-bearing walls meant the rebar work was dense and demanding throughout. Some wall sections required #9 rebar at 12 inches on center, with heavy horizontal reinforcement and stirrups packed around large window openings. Helix steel reinforcement fibers were added to the concrete mix for additional strength. To handle the lateral forces from the hillside and roof above, the Capstone Engineering team designed an underground “kickstand” footing at one wall column — a subterranean concrete brace that Gusmano described as “an uncommon and highly specialized solution for a residential application.”

The floor-to-ceiling glass throughout the home presented its own challenge. “Achieving these proportions using traditional wood framing would have been structurally prohibitive,” Gusmano said. Instead, the team designed what they called “Swiss cheese” concrete walls — reinforced ICF panels engineered to carry loads around the large window openings. For the kitchen’s long transom window, a custom steel beam and plate assembly was embedded directly into the ICF walls, with the upper ICF course acting as a structural concrete column. Wall thickness in that zone was increased to 10 inches. The cantilevered balcony off the primary suite was formed with rebar bent up and down through the beam to handle both tension and compression.

During one major wall pour, the concrete pump truck broke down mid-pour, creating cold seams and some alignment issues in a few wall sections. Despite that setback, the high rebar density prevented any structural failure during the delay.
The decision to use ICF came out of the COVID-19 pandemic, when lumber prices spiked, and the Crafted Concepts team started looking for alternatives. The initial pitch to the client focused on long-term value, durability, and the fact that ICF wouldn’t be subject to the same material price swings. The owner, contractor, and architect all backed the choice. Crafted Concepts chose Amvic in part because it offered a complete system of Amvic blocks for the walls, AmDeck Pro for the green roof deck, and Ampex for underslab radiant insulation. “This compatibility across product lines simplified procurement and ensured cohesive system performance,” Gusmano explained.