Ruhl Walker Architects

One of the most critical design imperatives for a new custom house is that it should be fully integrated with its unique landscape. We are currently collaborating with Kris Horiuchi of Horiuchi Solien Landscape Architects on a new house for a spectacular four acre site on Griffin Island in Wellfleet, MA. The site photos and digital model we posted back on March 19th show a design that takes its formal cues not only directly from Cape Cod Bay but also from the actively shifting, sliding, sandy topography of its dramatic coastal bank. The coastal bank’s movement is almost visible to the naked eye, with sand and trees moving together in dramatic harmony, and our house will also appear to shift and slide with the landscape.  One interesting surprise we have proposed to both the owners and Kris is a “floating hole” strategically placed in the middle of the house adjacent to the main entrance as well as main living space, where landscape and building architecture, earth and sky, sun and shade all come together, anchoring house to nature. See below for several building sections that we are developing, as well as additional details of the “hole”. And we’ll keep you posted as we continue to develop the design.

We are really excited about a new beach house we are designing for a magnificent waterfront property on Cape Cod Bay in Wellfleet. On Monday I had the pleasure of spending a full day with our clients, basking in the 70 degree sunshine and exploring the four acre site from end to end with three phenomenally talented prospective landscape architects.  We discussed ways to integrate the design of house and land, as well as opportunities for enhancing the diverse site features — hilly and thick with gnarled pines on one side, more open and low-scaled with beach plum, bayberry, and beach grasses on the other. We can’t wait to start collaborating with the landscape design team and seeing how things develop. Yes, we’ll keep you posted.

Will Ruhl

Designing sustainably has never been an appealing fad as far as we have been concerned, nor is it even really a separate mission for us; it has always simply been the right thing to do. One recently completed Ruhl Walker project – our Mystic Lake House – has received some press for Matthew Cunningham’s sustainable landscape design: Paula Bodah blogged about our use of reclaimed granite from Somerville’s IKEA construction site in New England Home Magazine Blog today, and Matthew’s own blog has some additional information, as well as great photos. After such a mild winter (…knock on wood…), spring will no doubt bring added drama to this extraordinary landscape, and we can’t wait to share that with you!

Drawing, designing, and dreaming are all gratifying aspects of being an architect, but we also really love when the projects we’ve designed begin actual construction. That is after all the primary goal of what we do all day in the studio! We work with some fantastic general contractors, and working closely with them until the day our clients move in is an exciting, collaborative process. Check out the projects below, and we’ll keep posting updates in the coming weeks.

The renovation of this Boston rowhouse includes opening up the middle for a dramatic, three-story living space, with natural light eventually pouring down from a large skylight above.

A couple we met when we designed new faculty housing at St. Mark’s School in Southborough, MA, asked us to design a small addition to their two-room house in the Berkshires. The new space will provide additional living space as well as a bedroom and bathroom; the existing house with only an open sleeping loft, lacked the kind of privacy needed with older children. The flat roof of the addition is accessed from an exterior stair tower, and will eventually have a railing around it for small rooftop gatherings for star-gazing and enjoying views extending deep into Vermont.

A view of a steel stair above the front entrance of a new house in Lincoln. The stair treads and partial risers will be solid red oak, and the stair landing will have red oak flooring and red oak veneered plywood below.

Major earthwork is evident at this substantial renovation project in Chelmsford. Here you see the beginnings of an excavation that will become a landscaped garden and terrace cut into the ground in order to bring daylight into new lower level living spaces. Natural light is so critical! Only small parts of the existing house will remain untouched when the project is finished later this year.

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.

Having worked on several cool projects in Hawai‘i over the last few years, our eyes have really been opened to architectural possibilities that rarely exist in New England. For example, we collaborated with Rhoady Lee Architecture and Design on the Big Island on a new house near the Four Seasons at Hualalai that had custom motorized rolling walls of glass and teak (detailed by our own Sandra Baron and Lilly Smith!) that disappear into lava rock walls, opening virtually every room in the house to trellised lanais, an edge-less pool, lushly landscaped courtyards, and sweet tropical breezes. So, how can we introduce these exotic possibilities to the custom houses we design in New England?

One answer is through bi-folding glass walls from companies like Nanawall, and we’ve designed several recent houses that utilize their exceptional technology. Our clients wanted to have large screened porches so they could live outdoors spring, summer and fall without the ubiquitous New England mosquitoes and flies, and wondered how they might join those porches to the rest of the house. Voila, we proposed Nanawall doors and something that has traditionally been a barrier in older New England houses becomes an opportunity. Added benefit: makes a great party house even better!

After a very long, exhausting day flying from Boston to the Big Island of Hawai‘i, and after a bizarre drive across seemingly endless miles of lava – usually at night with little sense of scale – harried visitors are often welcomed by a warm “aloha”, friendly faces, cool towels, fresh guava juice, and hotels unlike anything most of us have seen before. Who knew that hotels didn’t really need walls? As with Hawaiian houses, the main public spaces of most Hawaiian hotels are essentially large open air lanais; no screens as you would find in the Caribbean since flying insects are less prevalent in Hawai‘i, and it is rare to see the discrete bi-folding shutters or sliding skylights closed. The next morning you wake up, and you see views like those below.  Pure heaven! And fresh ideas for how these design possibilities might translate into our own work on custom vacation houses in New England…

Credits:
Mauna Kea Beach Resort: Mauna Kea Beach Hotel
Four Seasons Hualalai: Four Seasons Resort At Hualalai

Having just returned from the Big Island of Hawai‘i – the first time in five years not related at least partially to working with the Hawai‘i Wildlife Center – I still have Hawai‘i on my mind… It doesn’t help that the temperatures dipped into single digits this weekend, with wind chills below zero!

Architects have a hard time traveling without focusing obsessively on local architecture, and Hawaii’s – the openness to the elements, the blurring of inside and outside, the direct link to Asian architecture in both form and spatial flow – is particularly alluring. One key element is the “lanai”, a term first used in Hawai‘i in the early eighteenth century, and elsewhere known generically as a porch or veranda. The Hawaiian Islands are well known for their steady tropical breezes, a benefit and sometimes curse of being located so remotely in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Hawaiian lanais are often a house’s primary living space, and provide much needed shade and help Hawaiian buildings breathe by catching the trade winds and using that constant supply of fresh, naturally cooled (by the Pacific) air to remove hotter, more stagnant air. Below are a few of my favorite examples of modern lanais.

Send us your own images and thoughts! And look forward to future posts showing how we bring this “exotic” knowledge to our New England projects!

Will Ruhl

Credits:

Belzberg Architects, Santa Monica, CA: Belzberg Architects
Olson Kundig Architects, Seattle, WA: Olson Kundig Architects
Craig Steeley Architecture, San Francisco, CA: Craig Steely Architecture
Legoretta + Legoretta, Mexico: Legorreta + Legorreta

Just as construction of our Mystic Lake house was winding down, the neighbor’s house was demolished and construction began on their own new house; what goes around, comes around! And soon winter will have to arrive presumably; other than an odd snowfall around Halloween we’ve escaped so far. So, we will have to wait to do a full (professional) photo shoot until spring. In the meantime, our client shared the lovely photos below.

It’s been awhile since we posted an update for our Westport project, the modern house Ruhl Walker Architects designed to float above its Westport River site, and that we introduced back in January and April.  Rick and Susan have moved in and were even able to enjoy the summer while some finish work and landscaping continued. We directly benefited from some of this fun, not only because Rick and Susan were in such good spirits and kept telling us how much they loved their new house, but also because we were treated to an amazing feast with our design partners from Reed Hilderbrand and Oblio Design on August 6^th. Out of a great project experience have grown some wonderful friendships!

A few weeks after the celebration, Will Ruhl returned to discuss the “punch list”, which was unusually short given the excellent craftsmanship provided by the general contractor, Gilman, Guidelli, Bellow, & Co. It was actually more of a list of potential design modifications, minor tweaks to fine tune a few of the built details. Some fun work for Rick to ponder this fall!

Reed Hilderbrand’s landscape design is looking great already, and thanks to a violent rainstorm we witnessed first hand the wonderfully interactive water gathering rock gardens that coordinate perfectly with the house’s scuppers and waterfall element.

We are excited about some publication possibilities that have already come our way; publish or die… Keep tuned in for updates on that!

The east side of the house, viewed from a pea stone parking court.	The front door is on the side of a covered front porch, at the top of a 60” wide mahogany ramp. To the left is a grilling porch, protected from the prevailing breezes by the screened porch beyond.
The windows on the east façade are sized for selected views and to enhance cross ventilation.	The two architectural bars of the house are visible through the woods on the north side of the house. In the foreground on the right is an outdoor shower cube with slatted cedar siding that matches the base of the house.
The house appears to float above its site along the Westport River.	The main living spaces are in the upper, all glass bar of the house, with guest rooms and storage built within existing basement spaces below.
As you approach the house from the river, you become aware that the master bedroom windows on the far left are in a different plane from the living room windows. Between the two is a walnut clad volume that houses a fireplace and closets; this walnut cladding continues inside in both the living room and master bedroom.	60” wide custom galvanized steel and mahogany stairs lead up to an upper deck, adjacent to a large screened porch. Below the screened porch is an open-air storage room protected from the elements by a wall of cedar slats held apart to allow ventilation.
The main living and dining space, along with the screened porch and the master suite, has 10’ ceiling heights, and a wall of glass facing the river. At the end of the space is a wall of bleached walnut paneling around a fireplace clad in black slate. A TV is concealed to the left of the fireplace behind flush walnut paneling.	The dining area is completely open to the kitchen, and finishes in the kitchen match those of the living space. Flooring throughout is bleached Ash.
Kitchen cabinets are bleached walnut. At the right is a floor to ceiling door leading to the grilling deck.	At the end of the compact hallway separating the master suite and home office is a wall of glass with views into the woods and of the roof scupper / waterfall.
Behind the living area is an open stair leading down to a lower level family room. Beyond is a small sitting area with a window that brings in ample morning light.	The west wall of the living / dining space is virtually all glass, with views of the Westport River and glorious sunsets.
One wall of the master bedroom is paneled with walnut, and conceals closets and cabinetry; this material is aligned with the walnut volume visible on the west façade of the house. All built-ins, as well as the bed and side tables are custom designed by Oblio Design.	A closer view of the wall of storage in the master bedroom.
The stair railings inside match the exterior steel railing details, with stainless steel guards and walnut hand rail. The light is aniline dyed wood veneer.	Remember where this all started?...