architecture

  • Design Works Architecture, Pittsford New York

    Design Works Architecture specializes in timber frame structures – resort buildings, grand mountain estates, big giant Craftsman palaces – as well as renovations of similar types of buildings. Given their location in woody upstate New York (just east of Rochester, near the Canada border) this is not surprising; there’s a very strong Craftsman influence in the area, with the Roycrofters just down the road in East Aurora.

    Principal Charles Smith started the firm just a few years ago, after a history of working with other architects in the New York City area; he started out specializing on the "adaptive re-use of under-utilized structures" and that and his interest in historic renovation paved the way for his current emphasis on the Craftsman style (take a look at the "boat house," a rather unassuming name for a big, beautiful structure, which won an AIA award in 2007). His staff – project managers, architects, interior designers and construction specialists – all seem to be just as dedicated to this site-specific aesthetic, and it really shows in their work.

    We’ve created a Flickr set of images of those projects of theirs that fit most firmly within the Craftsman aesthetic – take a look.

  • Architectural Salvage VI

    Given the seemingly endless popularity of the DIY movement, awareness of green practices and recycling as parts of the design/build process and the high cost of new materials, salvage businesses continue to thrive:

    and in the UK, where architectural salvage is a way of life:

    • Cheshire Demolition "offers one of the biggest salvage and reclamation yards in the North West. They offer everything from reclaimed doors to fireplaces."
    • The Salvage Doctor specializes in the "reclamation and restoration of cast iron architectural salvage and antiques," and carries an extensive range of radiators (cast iron, school- / hospital- /column- style, etc.), fireplaces & surrounds, woodburning stoves, rainwater systems (guttering, downpipes & fittings), gates and railings. They are located in Horsham, West Sussex.
    • In Situ trade out of their Manchester ex-pub warehouse and studio. They keep a large stock of the usual – with attention to fancy pavers, lighting, glass, flooring, entryways and doors / door furniture.
    • Cox's Architectural Salvage has operated their 12,500 sq ft covered warehouse in Moreton-in-Marsh since 1992. They are one of the largest Victorian ironmongers in Britain, and also refinish and sell their own line of nickel plate and brass hardware.
    • Toby's Architectural Antiques has shops in Exeter and Newton Abbot. They carry a wide range of exterior detail – gates, ironmongery, roofing, slate, stone, water features – as well as kitchen materials, doors, light fixtures etc.
    • Park Royal Salvage at the Lower Place Wharf in London sells everything from building materials, doors, windows and reclaimed plumbing to doors, windows, fireplaces and other old house parts.
    • Robert Mills Architectural Antiques are one of the more specialized shops of their kind, with an especially large stock of architectural woodwork, mainly panels, columns, balustrades, mouldings and friezes, window frames, etc.

  • Frank Lloyd Wright’s Kentuck Knob (1954), Ohiopyle PA

    This wonderful FLW property – built in the "deluxe" Usonian style on a beautiful 80-acre lot – is just a few miles from Fallingwater. Along with the extensive sculpture garden, it is open for public tours.

    The House on Kentuck Knob was designed in 1954 and completed in 1956 for I. N. and Bernardine Hagan, friends of the Kaufmans, for whom Wright built Fallingwater. The home, build of tidewater cypress, glass and 800 tons of local sandstone – and a very striking copper roof – is situated in western Pennsylvania’s Laurel Highlands, and includes a gorgeous view of the Youghiogheny River gorge and the surrounding hills.

    The Hagans lived in the house for 30 years, and sold it to Baron Peter Palumbo, an English developer, art collector and architecture conservationist, in 1986.

    • slideshow of images from Kentuck Knob and its sculpture garden, including a few of Fallingwater

    Thanks to Douglas Sanders’ wonderful Frank Lloyd Wright Newsblog for reminding us of this very pretty and unique home!

  • Oaklawn Portal, South Pasadena


    Greene & Greene’s 1906 portal to the Oaklawn neighborhood in Pasadena; found in mins3rdkid’s Flickr photostream. Unfortunately, this pretty bit of stonework, wood and masonry is often overlooked in books and studies of the work of the brothers Greene; local artists, however, know it well – here’s Liz Reday’s painting.

  • “one beautiful bungalow” in Sacramento CA

    Gabby Hyman at RenovatorsPlace.com had the following story about Don Fox, who lives not far from me in Sacramento. Read the whole article here.

    When Don Fox took his first look at a 1910 Craftsman-style bungalow in Sacramento, CA, he knew he had found his long-sought fixer-upper. The home had "good bones," Fox said, but it was in miserable shape. A homeless man was sleeping on the porch, the windows were shattered, and there was so much grime on the kitchen walls that it "smelled like a restaurant grease trap." After gutting the home to bare studs and rafters, Fox and his wife, Amanda, completed a renovation project that won an award from the Association for the Preservation of Historic Homes.

    The remodeled kitchen, bathrooms, and living room were the true stars of what the Sacramento Bee called "One Beautiful Bungalow." An Italian-American from Brooklyn, Don has a particular fondness for the kitchen renovation, which resulted in a room where he spends a lot of his time whipping up traditional culinary faire.

    "The house felt good when I first saw it," he explains. "It was a spiritual feeling. That’s despite its having been sad, neglected, and uninhabited for years." Fox, a former journeyman carpenter, furniture-maker, and aficionado of period architecture, saw the potential to create a showpiece.

  • John Hudson Thomas

    There’s been a resurgence of interest lately in one of my favorite Bay Area architects, a fellow who was just as comfortable with classically Arts & Crafts structures as he was with Art Deco, Mission Revival and less orthodox (or harder to pigeonhole) styles.

    John Hudson Thomas grew up in the Bay Area and returned to Berkeley after graduating from Yale. While in the Architecture MA program at Berkeley, he studied under and became friends with both Bernard Maybeck and John Galen Howard, and worked for Howard for a few years after graduation.

    A member of Berkeley’s Hillside Club, he socialized with Maybeck, Julia Morgan and others, and certainly elements of their own styles are visible in his early work. He was especially interested in the tall, thin and somewhat whimsical forms of European designers like Mackintosh and Voysey, and incorporated these lines – along with those of the fledgeling Prairie movement and those of the Viennese Seccessionists – into his own style, which in more recent years been called part of the "First Bay" school. Eventually, his work became a bit softer and more orthodox, but he still kept his knack for interior architecture – lots of detail – and tall structures with long uninterrupted lines well into the 1920s and 30s.

    By this time, he was working for more established clients, on more complex and high-paying projects – mostly large homes – but his attention to landscape, environment and view was still paramount, and slightly odd or purposely out-of-place elements – friezes, odd finishes, unexpected combinations of materials, nooks and crannies and whimsical woodwork – remained. Luckily, many of his best buildings are still standing; a few are listed below:

  • McMansions bring tensions to old neighborhoods

    A good article by Kytja Weir in last week’s Charlotte Observer, on the constant butting of heads between historic preservationists who look at a neighborhood as an organic whole and selfish me-firsters who want the freedom to do whatever they want with their own property, damn the neighbors and everyone else. Gee, can you tell which camp I fit into? An excerpt:

    Tim Griffin, the association president, had invited builders,
    architects and others, trying to inspire his neighbors about how to
    renovate their homes without changing the feel of the newly popular
    neighborhood.

    "I’m just so adamant about no more McMansions," he said.

    But
    he knows his neighborhood has no power to restrict renovations. "We’re
    not a homeowners’ association. We’re not a historic district. So the
    next best thing is to educate."

    The neighborhood of small homes,
    many dating from the 1930s, is starting to feel a tension already
    experienced in Charlotte’s older neighborhoods around uptown such as
    Dilworth, Myers Park, Elizabeth, Plaza-Midwood and Wesley Heights as
    people with bigger tastes move in.

    Today Americans seek more space than their parents. In new developments bigger homes can be built without hindrances.

    But
    the desire for more space creates a tension in some older
    neighborhoods, built for the needs of the past. Neighbors there find
    themselves walking a line between preserving the past and maintaining
    property rights, promoting growth yet controlling how it takes shape.

  • Alfred Faber, Portland architect

    James Heuer has put together several SmugMug photo galleries, including one on homes built by Portland-area architect Alfred Faber, who was active as a residential designer from 1904 to 1917. I stumbled across that gallery this morning, and was struck by the level of detail and the tight symmetrical grids that Faber seemed to enjoy. I was very surprised that he dropped off the map, as it were, after moving to Los Angeles for a very early retirement, right when these elements were very much in demand by builders throughout the Los Angeles area.

    The M. B. Nease House is a particularly attractive example of Faber’s work, with all kinds of attractive woodwork – builtins and other architectural detail – still intact.

  • Frank Lloyd Wright in Buffalo: a podcast conversation with Neil Levine

    Caroly Batt with the Buffalo-Niagara Convention & Visitors Bureau writes to tell us about a very interesting podcast:

    Harvard University professor and noted Frank Lloyd Wright
    Scholar and author Neil Levine recently discussed Wright’s important
    architectural contributions to the Buffalo area. Buffalo is the home to many acclaimed Wright
    achievements including the Darwin Martin House Complex and Graycliff
    Estate    . The interview is available
    as an audio podcast on the Wright Now in Buffalo website.