WHAT WE DO
ARCHITECTURE
We believe architecture has the potential to be transformative. Making a well-conceived space can instill a sense of beauty, foster a sense of connection with the environment and with one another, and provide a platform from which to craft a meaningful life.
Our work pivots on themes of nature, simplicity, and efficiency with more than a strong bent towards the modern and formal. By embracing the simplicity of form and structure, our firm focuses on making work that sits carefully and thoughtfully in the landscape and encourages a direct indoor-outdoor connection. The structures are designed and organized to promote living easily and intentionally, around promoting human interaction and connection, while providing some space for solitude and reflection, if desired.
We create light-filled, open spaces that are at once, grand and efficient. We make smaller, unscripted plans with less compartmentalization to allow for change. We use high ceilings, thick walls, and large openings to create thermal flow and efficiency. The public/private spaces bleed together, and the quiet spaces open up to encourage gathering. The utility and service spaces are ample, and storage is always well-placed. Our landscapes are inspired by permaculture principles and consist of mostly gardens, food forests, and pollinator plots; always with an abundance of flowers.
We make beautiful, small, well-situated architecture. Our work is simple, passive, responsive, efficient, and natural.
INTENTIONAL DEVELOPMENT
We focus on creating places that promote community and self-sufficiency, places that integrate nature and the built environment, and places that support the sharing and reduction of resources by promoting density and intentional use of the land.
Our development projects strive to combine the proven merits of pocket neighborhoods and cottage courts with modern and fresh sensibilities. We endeavor to create communities of all ages, incomes, and social strata for people who want to live lighter and more minimally; to live more intentionally.
Our projects support aging in place and offer an option of living smaller in order to work smarter. They include local on-site community food production, shared resources, and the creation of connections, if desired, while balancing the need for privacy and individual expression.
While pocket neighborhoods and cottage courts are not new concepts, we believe that these options are missing in the standard development housing lexicon and that this model can help us live differently than the current traditional, single-family home development allows.
We select sites and orient the buildings to maximize the passive natural resources—sun, wind, water resources, the soil and site conditions. We evaluate and consider the existing community and services surrounding the site in order to encourage local engagement and multi-modal transportation.
ADAPTIVE REUSE
We encourage our clients to use existing resources at every opportunity instead of building new. Whether it is repurposing an existing building in whole or in part, we relish making something fantastically creative out of something old. Using existing building stock requires less embodied energy and saves resources. The history of a place imbues stories into the new space. Our first development project was adapting a 150-year-old clapboard church into a loft-style home. Even a decade later, people still visit the church and reminisce about their wedding, baptism, or family member’s story.
We can help you locate a building for adaptive reuse or procure and incorporate salvaged materials for your project.
CONSTRUCTION MANAGEMENT
With more than 25 years of construction management experience, we know how to realize a project. We guide our clients through the design and construction processes, provide overall project schedules, help define the required consultants, and assist with site assessment.
We manage the AHJs (Authorities Having Jurisdiction) and help shepherd a project through the required zoning and permitting processes. We can provide detailed estimating services throughout the project by enlisting qualified general contractors as partners. We can also act as the owner’s representative throughout the construction process, if desired. During construction, we work closely with the construction team to quickly and creatively solve issues as they arise in the field.