Well, its not exactly a barn raising, but the frame for the addition we have designed for an early 1800's farmhouse in Vermont's remote Northeast Kingdom, is definitely on its way up. It took us awhile to reach this point, but the work is moving fast now that it has begun, with winter threatening and the contractor eager to close in the shell. Our design concept here, in adding new spaces that total the sum of the square footage of the original house, was to set the addition back from the front of the old house and to turn the bulk of this addition perpendicular to the road. When complete, the expanded house will look a bit like a connected farmhouse with adjacent sheds and a barn, a model still to be seen through the hills of northern New England.
The walls have been painted, the light fixtures are almost all installed, the sod is about to go in.........and the furniture arrives. Always a stressful day, with the general contractor and his team struggling to get the house clean and ready, boxes arriving, drapes being hung, carpeting going down.
Years of work have gone into a project such as this one, a new custom home in the Massachusetts Berkshire hills, from initial design meetings to preparation of construction documents and local approvals proccesses.....and then construction, with innumberable site visits and job meetings. Its difficult, at the point when the furniture goes in and the owners begin to take possession, to give up control, to let go of this object of your closest involvement, but at the end........it really does belong to someone else......
On a lovely day in April, the talented architectural photographer Brian Vandenbrink photographed the new home we designed for a waterfront site on Maryland's historic and scenic Eastern Shore. We think he has captured the lively, modern spirit of the house; this is a house full of light yet designed for maximum passive cooling in the oppressive humidity of the summer months.
This view, from the kitchen out through the living and dining rooms to the water beyond, gives a sense of the open and airy character of the house, despite the fact that we have carefully shaded all of the window openings from the most direct of the sun's rays, through the use of overhangs and recesses in the wall. Take a close look at that stone on the countertop: an incredible find by our client. We liked it so much, we urged her to use it consistently through the house and it looks great.
Sometimes it takes a long time for a project to pass through design phases, changes of all kinds, permit processes, and then construction.........but in this case we have waited more than 10 years! The drawings above are schematic sketches for an addition to a charming Vermont farmhouse that we designed as one of the first projects for this firm. The house is used as a vacation retreat for several generations of a New England family and, initially, there were some concerns about how the house, which was of obvious sentimental value to them all, should be handled, what should be altered, and what should remain the same.
Well, its been more than a decade and decisions are ready to be made. So we dug out the old drawings, all drawn by hand on mylar, and we are starting again: same schematic plan, but updated to meet the newest requests of the family. We are absolutely delighted to see this project finally come to fruition!
Construction is moving along on the house we are renovating in the Boston suburbs and wrote about earlier as a transformation of a tired Cape in a quiet, desirable neighborhood. Rather than simply update this house, we determined through the design process, working along with our clients, to actually shift the character of the house. You can see in the photo above that this once rather conventional Cape is beginning to take on something of the character of an Arts and Crafts bungalow, with the long, horizontal dormers, the shingled brackets and the window style. The kitchen is just going in now, and landscape work should begin soon, if it ever stops raining here in New England. We'll keep you updated.
We are an architectural design firm located just steps from the Public Garden in the historic Back Bay neighborhood of Boston. We design new houses anywhere a client will take us, renovate existing houses, and plan office spaces. We are flexible, diligent, detail oriented and we love what we do. Here we focus on works in progress, news about the office and recent publications. For our office website, just click on this link:
Well, its not exactly a barn raising, but the frame for the addition we have designed for an early 1800's farmhouse in Vermont's remote Northeast Kingdom, is definitely on its way up. It took us awhile to reach this point, but the work is moving fast now that it has begun, with winter threatening and the contractor eager to close in the shell.
Our design concept here, in adding new spaces that total the sum of the square footage of the original house, was to set the addition back from the front of the old house and to turn the bulk of this addition perpendicular to the road. When complete, the expanded house will look a bit like a connected farmhouse with adjacent sheds and a barn, a model still to be seen through the hills of northern New England.
