TAG modern architecture
Before and After: Updating a Staircase
We posted progress photos a few months ago of a small project in Boston’s South End, where we were asked to update a stair connecting an upper level entry hall to a lower level combined living / dining / kitchen. The previous stair was fairly utilitarian, and did nothing to unify the two levels of the house.
We’ve kept the original stair structure, but resurfaced the stair treads with a new and more substantial profile, stained a rich gray/brown to coordinate with the owner’s furniture. The thickened treads are keyed into a white slatted wood wall on the lower level, which conceals doors to storage closets. The slats, in turn, are punctuated with small cutouts backed with LED programmable lighting. The outside wall of the stair is re-surfaced with large-scaled high-gloss panels, which visually connect the two stories with one common element. On the upper level, the entry now feels much larger after we replaced a solid half wall with a glass and stainless steel railing. A new paint scheme makes the entire experience lighter and calmer.
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- BEFORE: Poorly conceived and executed trim details made the original stair an awkward and jarring experience.
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- AFTER: The remodeled stair is light, bright and welcoming, easily unifying the two levels of the home.
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- BEFORE: The existing stair seen from the lower level living room is closed in with a solid plastered parapet.
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- AFTER: The stair is brighter and much more open, with a high gloss paneled back wall leading the eye up to the entry level.
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- BEFORE: The view from the front door shows how an awkward parapet wall obscured any sense of connection to the living spaces below.
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- AFTER: A new glass railing and modern floating panels on the side wall make the two levels feel bigger and better connected.
Westport River House featured on Houzz.com
Houzz is featuring Ruhl Walker’s Westport River House today, in an essay focusing on a design issue we care a lot about, and spend a lot of time and effort on. When designing a custom house, one of the most important design considerations is to recognize solar and wind orientation, views and privacy needs, which of course are not the same on all sides of the building.
You can check out the full portfolio for this project here:
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- The entry side of the house has limited glazing, each window focused on a particular view and enhancing cross ventilation and natural daylighting
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- The river side of the house is virtually all glass, to take full advantage of river and sunset views, as well as to enhance passive solar heat gain in cooler months
Modern Planar Field of Crocuses
Should anyone use the words “beautiful” and “modern” in the same sentence? Of course, and often! Check out the images of Matthew Cunningham’s own garden — below and on facebook — to see what 7,000 to 8,000 crocuses looks like in a small (only 500 square feet) lawn. Stunningly beautiful, as well as crisp and modern. You can see why Matthew is one of our favorite collaborating landscape architects.
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- After our unusually mild winter, Matthew says his “thousands” of crocus bulbs – planted in the fall of 2010 — multiplied into 7,000-8,000 and bloomed non-stop from February 1 through April 1.
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- Matthew took a sloping back yard, created a crisp edge with stone walls, and created a 500 SF planar field of crocuses.
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- Thousands of crocus bulbs were planted by hand in late 2010, but have since multiplied and filled in.
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- Matthew smoothed out the soil, leaving it a few inches low, then spaced the bulbs out, covered with soil, and then laid sod on top.
New designs at Ruhl Walker Architects’ studio
We are really excited about several new projects in the early stages of design, including new houses, two new lofts, and a master plan for a small school in northern New Hampshire. We will share some more information about each of these projects in the coming weeks, but in the meantime, check out the images and information below.
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- One of several potential conceptual designs for a new house built on an enormous, shifting coastal bank on the outer reaches of Cape Cod, this view shows the house on the water side. The main living space is elevated above the ground, under an asymmetrically curved roof, to enhance views and natural ventilation.
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- The inland side of the same Cape beach house is more introspective, with smaller windows in a collage of overlapping and sliding curved planes and volumes. The main house is to the right and an art studio is to the left, connected by a deck / bridge.
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- We are also in the very early stages of design for a new house designed for a wooded site on Martha’s Vineyard, for wonderful clients we have known for over 20 years.
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- An early proposal for the Vineyard house illustrates our effort to design a house that appears to almost melt into the land, not unlike the stone farmers’ walls that snake through the woods.
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- A conceptual site model for five small houses built into a hill on Cape Cod. In the upper right corner is the client’s existing glass and steel house; each new house is to have a green roof so that the view down from the main house is of a modern sculptural landscape, not just a collection of roofs.
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- The conceptual site plan shows how the houses hug close to one setback line to allow for each house to have surprisingly large side yards that can be designed to open to the dramatic views as well as capture ocean breezes.
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- This conceptual digital model shows material and formal ideas for the redesign of a penthouse at the W hotel condominiums in Boston. The unit will have a new steel and glass stair to a roof deck, and boasts 270 degree views stretching from the Harbor Islands to the Charles River and Cambridge beyond.
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- The proposed new kitchen for the W unit.
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- We’ve just started redesigning two lofts at the Channel Center in Boston, both units that we happen to have designed for previous owners several years ago. This photo shows an intermediate owner’s idea of appropriate loft décor — not exactly our cup of tea! — and a subsequent owner ripped out the polycarbonate and steel sliding doors and built full height plastered walls, crown mouldings, and a plastic raised panel door around the custom steel, fir, and acid etched glass shelving…
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- The existing heavy timber beams and columns in the Channel Center have steel column caps that are open in the middle to allow for steel tension rods to pass through them; a very cool industrial detail.
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- We have also been working on a master plan for The White Mountain School in Bethlehem, NH. The plan includes renovations and energy enhancement improvements to all existing buildings, converting underutilized older buildings into staff housing, bringing the original Frederic Law Olmstead landscaping back to its original glory, bringing the 1960’s vintage main administrative / classroom building into the 21st century, and adding a new theater / gathering space and arts classrooms, a 16-bed dorm addition with two faculty apartments, and a new 28-bed dorm with 3 staff apartments. Clearly this ambitious plan will take many years to realize.
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- Most of the administrative, classroom, and gathering spaces are within a rambling main building. Much of the building was rebuilt in the early 1960’s after a devastating fire destroyed most of the original structure, which had been a private estate prior to being donated to the school. The plans above show preliminary thoughts on how to add a new entrance that includes an elevator and other accessibility improvements, new art classrooms with a green roof, a new theater, converting underutilized ground floor space to a fully accessible infirmary, and converting the former upstairs infirmary into staff housing.
Feasibility Studies: Row House Renovations
Architects are sometimes perceived as design aesthetes, imbued with an overabundance of “creativity” but only a modicum of common sense about how to build things and solve real world problems. A savvy homeowner, however, understands that architects are actually uniquely trained as problem-solvers, with fluid analytical skills and the ability to visualize what others cannot. More and more we find ourselves applying these skills with residential projects by engaging with our clients in pre-purchase feasibility studies, to help determine if a particular plot of land, or an existing building to be renovated is actually suitable for the intended purpose.
Recently one of our clients was negotiating with a developer for the custom build-out of an already gutted 5 story row house. Because the developer was proposing traditional detailing where the owner preferred modern, we were hired to prepare a design to the owner’s liking that the developer could then price out and presumably build. As with all of our projects we learned a lot about the owner during this exercise, and helped him better understand his own likes and dislikes and the kinds of spaces that would be best for him. We worked out some really interesting ideas around a double-height space that solved a lot of problems with the row house format’s limited daylight and multiple, cramped levels. In the end, our client determined that pushing these ideas in this particular project would be too expensive and the results would be compromised.
Undeterred, and armed with our work, he was able to negotiate a great deal on another project where others hadn’t seen its possibilities. Now we’re designing a great apartment, with a dramatic three story skylit atrium as an unexpected surprise, bringing light and a feeling of spaciousness to the innermost reaches of the apartment.
Check back soon and we’ll be posting construction photos!
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- Our initial feasibility study was for the redesign of a five-story row house with a very tight footprint. To gain a larger sense of space, we proposed removing a portion of one floor, resulting in the types of connecting views shown below.
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- Our current project, for the same client and now in construction, builds on the lessons learned from the earlier double-high connecting space. Here, we can join three larger floors around a central, skylit core.
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- In the initial feasibility study, entry is at street level, with a stair going up to bedrooms, and a bridge to the left connecting to a small living room with an open kitchen below.
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- In the current project, the dining table anchors the high vertical space. Just visible at the top of this rendering is a glass bridge leading to the master bedroom.
The Hawai‘i Wildlife Center has its official opening!
Last Saturday, November 19th, our Hawai‘i Wildlife Center had its official opening, and Will Ruhl and Sandra Baron were fortunate to be able to be in Kapa‘au to represent Ruhl Walker Architects in paradise. We were joined by our Associate Architects and great friends Rhoady Lee and Aaron Spielman of Rhoady Lee Architecture + Design, our landscape architects Jason Umemoto and Nancy Cassandro of Umemoto Cassandro Design, the rest of our talented (and pro bono) design and engineering team, the general contractor and many of his incredibly generous sub-contractors (many if not most of whom had donated or discounted their time and material costs), and hundreds of neighbors, family, and friends.
The celebration began with a quietly beautiful and poetic blessing of the Center by Kumu Hula Raylene Ha‘alelea Kawaiaea, and also included some other visiting dignitaries who publicly declared their support, like John Buckstead of Governor Abercrombie’s office in Honolulu, who spoke on behalf of the Governor, who declared November 19th, 2011 as the official day of the Hawai‘i Wildlife Center. In between the speeches, entertainment was provided by students of the nearby Kohala Middle School, as well as the Kohala Hula group, Halau Kalaniumi Aliloa O Hawai‘i Nei, and topped off by the Grammy Award winning slack key guitarist John Keawe. There is always an element of bittersweet sadness at the end of a project, for clients and architects alike, but the focus of the day was on the path that led us to this point, and on the new beginning of the HWC’s important efforts to protect and rehabilitate the native flora and fauna of this magical place.
Though the project has a (small) punch list still to complete, the Certificate of Occupancy is in hand and “all” that is left to do is construct the pens and pools in the fenced-in rehabilitation yard for the expected endangered native species, build the custom pens for the recovery rooms, connect the custom hoses for the wash-rinse room (for handling any future oil-soaked animals in the event of an oil spill), install the rooftop solar photovoltaic array and the water-collection catchment system, deliver the triage room furniture, install building signage and educational displays, hire staff, and … raise some money for operations! We hope you will consider joining us in donating online to this wonderful and critically important environmental organization; just click here! Mahalo!
For additional information on the opening of the Hawai‘i Wildlife Center, see:
Big Island Video News (great video, if you have time!)
Hawai‘i Wildlife Center Facebook
Ethan Tweedie’s online photo album
For additional information on the HWC architecture, see:
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- Much needed rain greeted the early arrivers, but as Kumu Raylene blessed the Center the skies began to clear. image courtesy of Ethan Tweedie
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- The native species plants have really begun to take root, and looked great thanks to some substantial weeding by students from Kohala Middle School.
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- A quiet beginning…
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- … gave way to a crowd of over 400 well-wishers.
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- Kumu Hula Raylene Ha‘alelea Kawaiaea blessing the HWC.
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- The Kohala Hula group, Halau Kalaniumi Aliloa O Hawai‘i Nei.
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- Linda Elliott, Director of the Hawai‘i Wildlife Center, and Kumu Raylene officially opening the Center’s front door Hawaiian-style.
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- A ceremonial lei left as a blessing in the Native Species Garden.
images courtesy of Ethan Tweedie.