It’s been a busy spring for 4/1, and the hits just keep coming. As of today we bid a fond adieu to Emily, who has left for a shiny new job with the Main Street Center, part of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, in far-away Chicago. I am extremely proud of her and grateful that she kept the lights on during my maternity leave.
As of today, I’m is back in the office and catching up on all the action that happened this spring. New client appointments will be scheduled over the next few weeks, and I’m circling back to make contact with all of Emily’s open projects. As always, if you need anything, don’t hesitate to shoot 4/1 an email.
Art provided by S, age 7. (Only a designer’s kid would draw a row of houses complete with gable vents.)
Just heard via the twittersphere that I won a Golden Leaf Award from the City of Durham for my former employers’ (Trinity Design/Build) office on Gregson Street. It is one of the only commercial buildings I’ve ever designed, and through a lot of work between design, construction, and technology, it managed to make LEED Platinum, receive preservation tax credits, and now this! Very cool to hear.
My workspace there was my favorite desk ever, crazy orange wall and all.
The official flyer from the Golden Leaf Awards – click for a more readable image.
Judge’s comments read: “Recognizing the simple visible efforts on a small scale goes a long way to demonstrating how any project can be done in a sustainable way. What a wonderful new life for a ‘forgotten’ building.”
The original, sunken stoop was well on its way towards hazardous.
Two houses built in the 1970s have been in my thoughts recently, and are leading me to define my thoughts about preservation and importance. The first is an architect-designed, Japanese-influenced, contemporary home where I was asked to design a replacement for the failing front brick stoop. Because of a leaky water main, the stoop had slid down 5″ from its original location, leaving a treacherous, 9″ front step. The owners (full disclosure: they’re family) wanted to add a railing where there had never been one, and wanted something that fit in with the original architecture and detailing.
The new, completed deck and railing.
For me, investigating the original, simple ornamentation was just sinking into a new architectural idiom. It was obviously different from the 1920s Durham patterns, but also obviously present. Finding a detail from the eaves, repeated in a slightly different scale to create a railing was a perfect solution, and much like sussing out the appropriate front porch pattern in a neighborhood. With clear architectural merit, it does not matter how old this house is – it is important.
The other house? A late 1970s tract home set outside of town is the new home of a friend, who invited me over to give a little advice for their renovations. This house doesn’t seem to have any distinguishing features and walks the dangerous line between cool-vintage and out-of-date-ugly. In 20 years, it will be fully over the border into quaint and charming, but right now it’s… questionable.
Not my friends’ bath, but might as well be… (thanks, flickr!)
Talking and walking through the house, we decided that it needed to be pushed towards the mid-century, and that the new owners will retain the pieces that already seem cool and not mourn the rest. The new elements they bring in will try to play nice with the original features but not be slavish to the era either. So while there are no distinctive elements, hopefully the house can be shepherded along towards importance – it’ll have to get there by making it through the years, not via some architectural design that set it apart from the beginning – but it will make it eventually.
