One of the more delightful projects of Austin, Texas–based Matt Fajkus Architecture isn’t a house at all: It’s a two-story dock on Lake Austin, designed with the sun in mind. An angled roof and perforated steel screens provide a precisely calibrated amount of sun and shade throughout the year, as well as shelter from the breezes and filtered views. “The thing that just completely stood out to us [is that] it’s architecture as art, or is it art as architecture?… It just makes you smile,” says Stephanie Kingsnorth, AIA, a juror for the AIA Austin 2023 Design Awards, where Filtered Frame Dock received an award of merit. One year prior, it won an Honor Award in this magazine’s architecture competition.

Since 2010, the eponymous firm has been creating intriguing, light-filled spaces that coax out the distinctive characteristics of each site—which could be its slope, its rocks and trees, or even its iron-rich red soil. A quick scroll through the firm’s website shows how different these architectural interventions can be. According to principal Matt Fajkus [pronounced FI-cus], the variety of responses stems from the geographic diversity of Austin, his hometown. “We’re at a fault line,” he elaborates. “Immediately east of downtown is very flat, moist prairie land, and immediately west of town is very rocky and hilly— an area that is very good for architecture and very bad for farming. We have a lot of interesting changes in topography, different tree and plant species, and this whole ecotone that exists in this convergence of different realms.”

These nuances of the natural world fuel Matt’s ambitions as an architect. When he was getting his master’s in architecture at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design, his thesis adviser and role model was Pritzker Prize–winning architect Rafael Moneo. “What I admire about Moneo is his sensitivity to try to do something a little special and unique for each project—case-by-case, contextually driven work,” he says. Like Moneo, Matt is both a practitioner and a teacher. He is a tenured professor of architecture at the University of Texas at Austin, and has received multiple awards for teaching over the last 14 years. Along with creative problem-solving, he teaches soft skills, such as how to give a compelling presentation of design ideas. 

As a child, however, he was very introverted and had a bad stutter, relying on drawing to communicate his thoughts. His parents, who were both teachers, modeled “extreme patience and a heightened sense of empathy,” says Matt. While he was getting his undergrad degree in architecture at the University of Texas at Arlington, he began apprenticing with Max Levy, who has been called the poet laureate of Dallas architecture, and worked for him for a couple of years after graduating. A summer internship at Foster + Partners in London during his time at Harvard led to a job offer from the firm, where he spent five years remodeling airports and designing high-speed rail stations and skyscrapers. “It was incredible to realize the power of design at any scale,” says Matt. “As the Eameses would talk about it, when you’re designing a room, you’re thinking about the next scale up from the room, and the next scale down, which is the furniture or the built-ins.”

His experience at Foster + Partners, while inspiring, also helped him realize that he didn’t want to work for a big firm. He came back home to join the faculty at UT Austin, and soon launched his own practice with the help of architect Sarah Johnson, AIA, who had recently graduated from UT Austin. The two built the practice from the ground up; today, Sarah is the co-principal in their firm of eight people. “We are very collaborative,” she says. “Matt’s role is to help us synthesize those ideas, make them really strong, and communicate them. It feels like studio [class in architectural school] where we get to be really creative, within real-life constraints.”

Since the relationship between indoors and outdoors is so integral to its projects, the firm increasingly began to take the lead on the interiors as well (Matt, Sarah, and some employees are also licensed interior designers). “We can offer a streamlined experience in terms of the design as well as the representation, where we can have everything built into the model and simulate different things between inside and outside,” Matt notes.

The aforementioned dock, completed in 2019, is probably the most high-profile of the firm’s projects to date. Around the same time, the first batch of built residences had their debut, catching the eye of the design community. Among the reasons for all the attention: the casual-chic Bracketed Space House, whose transparent dining “bridge” allows views through the home and has a crisp infinity-edge pool. 

Among the more recent work is Descendant House, a multigenerational house that elegantly accommodates three generations plus guests. “They’re all in the same structure, but each has their own privacy, and spaces to mix,” says Matt. The 4,000-square-foot home is a split level, with the younger generation and their children located on the upper floor and guests and grandparents in separate volumes below. The firm figured out how to showcase the distinct microclimates on the steeply sloping site: The upper level flows onto a sunny roof terrace that connects to the home’s vegetable garden, and the common areas below look into a shady tree canopy.

Manifold House, meanwhile, demonstrates another type of architectural sleight of hand: It looks like the simple “modern farmhouse” requested by the owner, but has the flow and porosity of contemporary architecture. Located in the rugged terrain of Texas Hill Country, a 30-minute drive west of Austin, the deeply sloped site also increased its complexity. To minimize grading, the design team created a long, two-story house at the top of the site and tucked a third floor into the slope below. Tall retaining walls on either side hold the slope back, creating narrow patios and allowing light to come through side windows on the bottom floor. “The farmhouse rhythm of punched windows”—to quote Matt—gives way spectacularly to a glass-walled double-height living room on the lower levels.

Also in Texas Hill Country is the Mount Sharp Residence, a retirement dream home on a 22-acre property. The firm sited the low-slung dwelling along one of the site’s small plateaus, which run east-west, to maximize sunlight, natural ventilation, and views. Various functional elements, such as kitchen appliances and storage areas, are tidily organized along extra-thick walls that run perpendicular to the plateau. These rugged walls, clad in coarse-cut stone, are part of the home’s passive ventilation system: The breezes coming over the top of the plateau can flow through the openings and cool the spaces between the walls. The firm’s description of this house reads: “The materiality of the project is concentrated, regional, and meant to provide comfort and shelter when the elements are extreme, yet its solidity dissolves when the house is opened up.”

While the firm was completing the design of Mount Sharp, Matt had recently finished writing “Architectural Science and the Sun: The Poetics and Pragmatics of Solar Design.” Cowritten with architect Dason Whitsett, the nearly 300-page opus is about how to bring sunlight thoughtfully into a building and use it for lighting and ambiance, as well as how to mitigate its glare and propensity to overheat spaces. There’s a whole chapter devoted to “Creating Shadows.” According to Matt, the book’s influence on the firm’s work is clearest in Mount Sharp, which is designed around the sun for energy efficiency as well as phenomenology and wellness. 

“Ultimately, my goal is to continually hone my own craft in both critical creative endeavors and teaching, simultaneously preparing students to make their own meaningful contributions to the built environment,” he says. The two sides of his work enrich and uplift each other.

The post Pro-File Design: Matt Fajkus Architecture appeared first on Residential Design.

A while back, architect Oonagh (pronounced “Oona”) Ryan arrived at her clients’ Santa Monica bungalow to discuss plans for their new home in Los Angeles. As she was walking up to the house, she noticed a bush with a profusion of bright red berries. She picked one and brought it to the meeting, suggesting that it could be incorporated into the palette of their new home. The clients responded with enthusiasm. The resulting house is cream-colored, but the adjacent art studio is a vivid red, signaling that artistic chaos has a place here along with calm and order.

Boldly colored, warmly inviting, distinctively personal—these are not adjectives that are always associated with modern architecture. But when L.A.’s Midcentury Modern legacy, its tradition of freewheeling architecture, and the vibe of its buzzy retail and hospitality spaces are combined with an inventive mind that enjoys a good design challenge, you get Oonagh’s firm, which is named ORA. 

“We attract creative clients that have ambitious goals,” says Oonagh, who speaks with a slight lilt that she retains from her native country of Ireland. “We find out what is unique to them and their values and culture—something that no one else has—and integrate that into their home. It’s about creating extraordinary places for everyday life.”

Oonagh’s own path shows how suited she was to becoming an evangelist for L.A.’s optimistic spirit and indoor-outdoor lifestyle. Growing up in the Irish countryside, her favorite activity was to accompany her grandfather, who owned a construction company, to different jobsites. She studied architecture at Technological University Dublin in the late ’80s. 

Captivated by Frank Gehry’s hugely influential home renovation in Santa Monica and the work of other cutting-edge practitioners in Southern California, she entered the green card lottery, hoping to pursue her dream of doing architecture in L.A. She won the lottery and made the move, but it took her a little time to establish herself. After a year of waitressing, she landed a job as a designer at Frederick Fisher and Partners, where she worked on a mix of high-end residential, restaurants, and civic commissions. Five years later, she moved to Koning Eizenberg, where she continued to work on a wide variety of projects.

According to Oonagh, she might still be at Koning Eizenberg today if she hadn’t purchased a house on the east side of town. The Koning Eizenberg office was on the west side, resulting in a grueling commute. While she contemplated looking for a new job, she also began taking on some side projects; three years later, she had enough work to launch her own firm.

The ORA Principles

That was in 2014. Ten years later, ORA has a distinctive body of work that includes award-winning residential, commercial, and hospitality projects. They include the restaurant Auburn in Hollywood, which won a James Beard Foundation Restaurant Design Award; Liberation Coffee House in L.A., which received a national AIA Small Project Award; and the residential project Art Barn, which garnered multiple local AIA awards. In 2021, ORA was honored as an emerging practice by the local chapter of the AIA, highlighting the firm as one to watch. “Every project is an exploration into how materials come together to create powerful space,” the jury commented.

One of Oonagh’s first projects as a solo practitioner, the renovation of her home in L.A.’s Mount Washington neighborhood, provides a good introduction into her guiding principles. Rome House, which is named after the street it is on, is a classic Midcentury post-and-beam house. It was sold as a tear-down, but Oonagh saw that it had good bones (first principle: renovate whenever possible). In her plans for the remodel, she opted out of air conditioning, leveraging the structure’s deep overhangs and original ventilation panels (second principle: optimize natural light, heating, and cooling for comfort as well as sustainability). She also removed interior walls and enlarged windows (third principle: emphasize connections to the outdoors) and kept the home’s existing footprint of 880 square feet (fourth principle: design spaces efficiently for living large). “My dining table seats six, but I can have twenty people over for dinner on my patio,” Oonagh notes. 

To create a sense of ease within a project, the design team at ORA uses a consistent palette of materials and colors, and creates built-in cabinetry with the same detailing throughout. “Architectural elements shouldn’t line up exactly and furniture shouldn’t fit perfectly, so that spaces have the breathing room to flex and change,” says Oonagh.  

Flexibility is yet another key principle. “Since the pandemic, houses have to work so much harder now,” Oonagh observes. “You have to build in that capability.” Located in Santa Monica, Bookend House was designed pre-pandemic, but includes everything you would want in case of a pandemic. In addition to the main 3,330-square-foot house, it also has a large home office and a 2-bedroom guest house/accessory dwelling unit. The two adjunct spaces are “bookends” to the main house but can also function as self-contained units. The structures are designed to conserve space for a sizable lawn and pool. 

To maintain privacy for all three areas, the ORA design team sunk the home office and guest house a few feet below grade, and gave them strategically placed windows that restrict sight lines. Their rooftops cleverly double as gardens for the upper level of the main house. Neither the main house nor the guest quarters are equipped with air-conditioning, since natural ventilation systems, including operable skylights, keep them sufficiently cool.

The home with the red art studio, dubbed Boomerang House, deploys a similar strategy: the main house is a narrow bar, leaving room for the art studio “wing” and plenty of outdoor space, rather than building out to the edges. Like Bookend House, the slender main structure offers plenty of opportunities for natural lighting and ventilation. The entrance opens into a vestibule with a glass wall at the end, drawing the eye outside. The main house is on the left, and on the right is the art studio. The two-story house has a long set of operable skylights over the staircase, highlighting the circulation route and bringing light and air into the center. The custom stair railing is inspired by the metal gate from the clients’ previous home (and includes the repurposed gate itself). 

The eye-catching art studio is a true flex space. With its double doors, it can function as a one-car garage, satisfying local building code for a covered parking space. It is also an accessory dwelling unit, with its own bathroom and kitchen area, accommodating guests as needed. The trapezoidal skylight was inspired by artist James Turrell’s Skyspaces and is tilted to the north to bring light deep into the studio.

Another project with an artistic focus, Art Barn, began life as a cottage-style home in Manhattan Beach, and continues to look like one from the front. But the ORA design team redid the back half so that its owner could have the entertaining space of his dreams.  The new addition is a great room that combines kitchen, dining, and living area, and opens onto a wide backyard terrace. It has the voluminous scale and drama of a repurposed industrial space—lofty ceiling, butcher-block flooring, exposed steel structure—but is domesticated by a Midcentury-like ceiling of knotty-cedar boards and Douglas fir joists. The kitchen features a glass and ceramics collection displayed in custom wooden shelving, and the living room showcases artwork suspended from a custom steel track system.

“We gravitate towards simplicity and things that are made well,” says Oonagh. “We’re aiming for an understated, laid-back Californian feel that has room to breathe and evolve.”

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The projects of Risa Boyer Architecture are distinct in their siting, massing, design, and materiality, but they share a similar scale—one that is approachable and unassuming. Not surprisingly, firm founder and principal architect Risa Boyer Leritz, AIA, was drawn to the design profession after attending an exhibition of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Usonian houses at the Marin County Civic Center, also designed by Wright, in California. “I was around 10 or 12 at the time, but something about the scale of those little residential units attracted me,” Risa recalls. 

Growing up with an artistic family in the Napa Valley, surrounded by wood-clad, post-and-beam houses, now generally described as Midcentury Modern, Risa naturally formed a design aesthetic at a young age. “My parents were very supportive of everything I did,” she says, “and when I had started to show an interest in architecture, my mom leaned into it, probably to steer me toward a career.”

Her mother’s instincts paid off. After Risa earned her Bachelor of Architecture degree from the California College of Arts and Crafts (now the California College of the Arts), she would go on to build an award-winning design firm in Portland, Oregon, focused on modern and sustainable residential architecture and interior design. Along the way, she found inspiration and purpose from other architects and grew—and befriended—a sizable base of clients and collaborators.

Learning From Leaders

During her last year of college, Risa began working at Tanner Leddy Maytum Stacy Architects (now Leddy Maytum Stacy Architects), in San Francisco; she joined the staff after graduation. Although Risa appreciated the firm’s design process and office culture during her tenure, the influence of founding principals William “Bill” Leddy, FAIA, and the late Marsha Maytum didn’t truly hit her until she saw the business and life partners again years later at a conference. “Bill and Marsha really influenced how I run my firm today,” Risa says.

While Risa had worked more directly with Bill while at the firm, Marsha was the one who had left a lasting impression. Risa admired her vibrancy, leadership, and strength in the then male-dominated office and profession. “She carried herself well in that environment,” Risa recalls. “She was strong and kind. Her design sense stood out to me, and she was a pioneer in sustainable building.”

What also struck Risa was Marsha’s deftness at advancing her career and her firm while raising her then-young children, who would often visit the office. After leaving LMSA in 2000 and working at several smaller firms in Los Angeles, Risa started RBA in 2006. “I wanted to have kids, be able to spend time with them, and have an architecture career,” she said. The prevailing office culture and long working hours at a conventional firm, she believed, would not be conducive to her goals.

Two years later, after making inroads in Los Angeles, Risa and her husband decided to uproot everything and move to Portland, where they could grow their family nearby other relatives. It was, of course, the height of the Great Recession.

Although she could sustain her business on a few outstanding projects in California, Risa knew she had to establish her practice locally. A self-proclaimed introvert, she pushed herself to network and made several contacts through a group of mom-owned businesses. Slowly, but surely, her then two-person firm “inched our way out of the recession,” she says.

Thriving in Work

Today, RBA comprises four designers, all of whom happen to be women. “We have a nice atmosphere in the office,” Risa says. As offices began to reopen when the COVID-19 pandemic waned, “everybody wanted to come into the office right away,” she continues. “We all wanted to be together and collaborate in person.”

Half of RBA’s clients come from referrals and the other half through its website, social media, and publications. “The theme that connects them all is that they’re good people who want to work with us in a collaborative way,” Risa says. “What I love about residential architecture is that [our relationship with clients] grows with the project. We’re working with them for a couple years on such an intimate thing as the place they’re going to reside. You learn so much about them through the process that informs the architecture.”

The majority of RBA’s projects are in Oregon, but the firm has also developed a pocket of clientele in Bellingham, Washington, where Risa has found a trusted builder and friend in Jerry Richmond, owner and founder of Indigo Enterprises Northwest. 

RBA’s project load is divided about equally between new construction and remodels. For the former, RBA begins the design process by studying the site, potential limitations such as wetland areas or high bedrock, and how a house can leverage the best views. Risa says many clients who are drawn to RBA are creatives themselves and come bearing a list of needs and even sketches. Still, her team relies on open dialogue and conversation to understand their clients and their vision. “Their list tells you one thing,” Risa says, “but talking to them really tells you a lot more.”

As the firm begins to develop the design with their client, it also stays mindful of the project budget. “Budget is something that we take seriously,” Risa says. “We educate our clients early on about what is a realistic budget” for their project goals. And price does not necessarily correlate with quality, she notes. “You can have the highest cost of construction and end up with a terribly built building. They’re not one and the same.”

Following in the design principles and values of LMSA, RBA prioritizes energy performance and sustainability. The firm is a big proponent of specifying tight building envelopes, high insulation values, and heat- and energy-recovery ventilators to cycle in fresh air while minimizing energy loss. 

Its commitment to designing high-performance projects is bolstered by the Washington State Building Code, the latest version of which requires most residential projects to meet the 2021 International Energy Conservation Code. The mandates have helped save energy-related features—such as continuous exterior insulation—from being value engineered out. For her part, Risa believes these features offer good value for a relatively modest expense. Several contractors for RBA’s Portland-based projects have also warmed to the idea of including more high-performance features, such as those listed in the Passive House building standards. 

Risa aspires to design a certified Passive House in the future, and RBA architect Valerie “Val” Reynolds is already a Phius Certified Builder. For now, the firm is content with integrating sustainable principles with design in a manner that clients can choose to notice—or not. Although clients might initially worry that sustainability relegates them to solid walls and boxy volumes, Risa says that’s not the case at all. “We like big windows on our projects too,” she notes, adding that RSA projects typically feature expansive windows of double- or triple-pane glazing—taking in panoramas of Puget Sound and other uplifting sights. 

Materially Speaking

In addition to Frank Lloyd Wright, Risa points to the handcrafted quality, texture, and forms of Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer and Wright apprentice and renowned architect John Lautner as influential to her design aesthetic. Favorite materials include Cor-Ten steel for exteriors; black powder-coated steel for interiors; and concrete and smooth-troweled plaster for their minimalist look and malleability. Given their location in the Pacific Northwest, RSA projects often integrate wood structural elements, millwork, and finishes. Rough-hewn cedar siding and rift-sawn walnut and white oak, in particular, “lend themselves well to Midcentury design,” Risa says.

At the Nathan residence, a remodel that was Risa’s first client work in Portland, the prevalence of wood complements the owners’ collection of American Midcentury furniture. A custom, handcrafted walnut screen separates the entrance from the dining room while offering a contrast to the vertical grain fir of kitchen cabinets and a vintage wood dining table by Van Keppel and Green for Brown Saltman. RSA replaced the existing dark wood floor with light-colored terrazzo to brighten the interior. Portland Monthly published the project, giving Risa’s nascent firm a boost in her new home state.

Riverwood, Risa’s first new construction project in Portland, is a 6,242-square-foot residence that hosts multiple family generations. The design’s strategic massing and setbacks enable views to the Willamette River from nearly every room. “The clients were fantastic and creative people who wanted a minimalist box,” Risa says. At night, the house’s black-painted exterior disappears into the darkness and shadows of the surrounding trees.

RBA used concrete to create a feature element in Academy Highlands, the firm’s first project in Bellingham. A minimalist, cast-in-place concrete fireplace anchors an open living space that offers panoramic views of Whatcom Lake. Moreover, “everybody enjoyed working together,” notes Risa, who had recently returned from a Bellingham trip where she visited former clients and her builder Jerry Richmond.

Going Commercial

For the time being, much of RBA’s portfolio is residential, but the firm also takes a few commercial projects. One example is the mixed-use infill project her office currently occupies. The project replaced a rundown house on an awkward lot, Risa says. “Nobody wanted it. It was a strange, L-shaped property with a courtyard in the center on a commercial street that didn’t have much new development happening on it yet.”

The opportunity was too good to pass up for Risa and her husband, who had always talked about developing a property together. After purchasing the property in 2014, they opened Makers Row in 2017. The energy-efficient, mixed-use project comprises 19 apartments and two commercial spaces across two perpendicular volumes, allowing natural light to reach all units and building elevations. Its tight building envelope and use of highly insulated window units from Canada helped earn the project recognition from the nonprofit organization Energy Trust of Oregon.

More to Come

Nearly 20 years into her own practice, Risa tries to impart lessons from her own experience to her team. She can still remember days ruined by the everyday setbacks that architects encounter, particularly early in their career—a delayed building permit or a mistake in the field. “I would think, ‘This is the end of this project,’ or ‘I should have known about that,’” she recounts. “Now, I know it’s going to be OK. It might not be as perfect as everybody thought, but it always works out.” 

Risa also hopes to grow her full-service architecture firm in new directions. She has added furnishings to its capabilities, which already included finishes, lighting, and cabinetry design as part of its standard scope. By collaborating with her clients on furniture selection, she believes they will enjoy the benefit and the “fun of having a cohesive space in the end.”

She also plans to continue implementing more Passive House design strategies into the firm’s projects to show how naturally sustainable design principles suit good architecture. Her ability to drive her clients and the building industry toward an increasingly higher level of energy performance is one reason she continues to enjoy architecture. “Architects have a huge impact on the environment,” Risa says. “We can turn that into having a positive impact on the environment. That’s exciting to me—that we can have that much influence on it.”

Residential Design has previously published two case studies by Risa Boyer Architecture:

• Academy Highlands in Bellingham, Washington
• Glen Road in Lake Oswego, Oregon

The post Pro-File Design: Risa Boyer Architecture appeared first on Residential Design.

Custom home clients are generally a pretty savvy bunch, especially if they’ve been through the process before. When vetting a residential architect for their project, they’ll talk with their friends, flip through design magazines, click through ezines, and pore over architects’ own websites. This is a fine approach, of course, but it misses something key about the best architects. Clients would also benefit from an architect dedicated to improving the craft and the process of delivering residential architecture. Timothy Clites, AIA, is the definition of that kind of architect.

Tim has always made it a point to learn all he can about the business of residential practice, while also keeping his design skills fresh. Since his time as a senior associate at the venerable Washington, D.C., design firm Barnes Vanze Architects, he has sought out relevant educational opportunities—conferences, symposia, retreats, design tours—anything that might add to his expertise in his chosen field. And when he found himself even more busy and successful at bringing work in than he anticipated when he launched Clites Architects in 2010, he brought in consultants to help him take control of the pace. 

There’s a modesty in understanding that you always have more to learn. That modesty permeates the firm’s approach to working with clients, to designing buildings that honor the landscape and the region, and to collaborating with the expert tradespeople who execute the designs. Tim attributes his formative years to humble beginnings. “I grew up in rural Pennsylvania—on a farm, milking cows,” he says. “I also framed houses and wanted to be a contractor. So I went to community college to learn about drafting. I wanted to know how to draw the house I would build.”

That led him to pursue an architecture degree at Boston Architectural College, while also working as a drafter and a job captain for an architectural firm. As luck and talent would have it, his first job as a project architect was for Catalano Architects in Boston. Thomas Catalano, AIA, had worked his way up through the offices of Robert A.M. Stern and Graham Gund, going on to design grand New England Shingle-style houses. Tim’s three years there was a graduate-level education in fine traditional design and prepared him well for his next move, to Barnes Vanze in D.C.

Founded in 1989 by two Hartman Cox alums—Ankie Barnes, FAIA, and Steve Vanze, FAIA—Barnes Vanze quickly became one of the go-to firms in Washington for traditional residential architecture. Tim worked in the office in Georgetown beginning in 1999. From there he followed the firm’s growth beyond the city to the Virginia and Maryland countryside, where many fortunate Washingtonians own weekend homes.

After trodding a well-worn path between D.C. and Middleburg, Virginia, on behalf of Barnes Vanze projects there, Tim felt the tug of his rural roots. “I fell in love with the work and the people at Barnes Vanze,” he recalls. “But my first client there was in Middleburg, and my wife and I found ourselves coming out on the weekends. Eventually, we thought, ‘wouldn’t it be great to live and work here?’

Barnes Vanze was open to the idea,” he continues. “We had a baby ready for school and we wanted to enroll him out here. So, as a senior associate, I moved out to Middleburg, helping them with everything. For seven years, I grew and managed the firm’s office here. And it taught me a new set of skills—who to hire, how to manage, how to set standards, and how to interview clients.”

On His Own

In short, Tim had acquired all the necessary skills to launch his own firm. “2010 came around and I was not moving back to Washington. Our kids were in school, we were part of the community, and I loved the area,” he recalls. “And I had a client who was very much advocating for this. ‘What are you afraid of,’ they asked. In the middle of the recession, the stars aligned to open my new practice. I was finishing the work I had and taking on new projects. I started with myself and one other employee.”

Since then, the office has averaged about five to seven people, with Tim’s wife, Linda, helping with the books in her spare time. It’s not unlike a rural family medical practice. As a country doctor would, the country architect tackles whatever problem comes in the door. The work is as much about establishing, maintaining, and nurturing relationships as it is about architecture with a capital A. Tim has always been comfortable with architecture at any scale and style, having tackled small remodeling jobs and estate properties at his previous firms. Although it’s maybe less well-known, Barnes Vanze has done some lovely modern work and, especially, work that marries modern and traditional. 

This portfolio was perfect for Middleburg, the Plains, Flint Hill, Leesburg, and other tony enclaves of Virginia, where you never know what you’ll find at the end of that long driveway. The other unknown is what constraints any easements will put on the development and use of a property. This was another skill set Tim acquired in his years in the region, and he’s often called in as a consultant for property searches. “There are large swaths through Virginia that are in easement. It’s part of what’s special about the area,” he explains. 

“It’s such a privilege that people had the foresight to think this way decades ago. But that means that land restrictions may dictate the size, location, and numbers and types of buildings. And these restrictions are unique to each piece of property,” he continues. “You may have a 100-acre property where only a guest house can be added. Or you have a large piece of property where you can’t build in the obvious spot at the top. It’s about protecting the open countryside. If I’m going to build in this area, I’m going to be careful.” 

He’s going to be careful because it’s the right thing to do, of course. And he wisely understands there is no anonymity in small towns. You will be held accountable at the supermarket, on the kids’ soccer field, and at the gas station. “We’re architects, we can design anything, but that’s a very arrogant thing to say. When I think about our work, I think about our clients. How important is architecture versus the exploration with the client? 

“Especially since COVID, we’ve been talking with clients about the future as deeply as we can. I believe if they are still in the home we designed when things happen, they’ll be glad we talked about it.” The strength of the firm’s repeat business is testament to that relationship building. Clients do come back for revisions—both large and small—that allow them to stay in their houses amid life changes. 

“Our work is about architecture,” notes Tim. “But deeper than that, it’s about—if we do it well—someone should be able to live in their house for as long as they want.”

The post Pro-File Design: Clites Architects appeared first on Residential Design.

President Matt Shoberg and his wife and CFO, Paige Shoberg, have been part of this business landscape for nearly twice that long. Now 40-some employees strong, they have a firm hold on the luxury home market that has skyrocketed in the last five years. At any one time, the company is working on seven to 10 residential projects with budgets ranging from $7 million to $20 million. And although Matt describes himself as a “high D”—a visionary who operates “at 30,000 to 50,000 feet at my best”—that volume still allows him to manage each client relationship, at least from a bird’s-eye view. “We don’t want to be a faceless company; I want all my clients to know I’m available,” he says. Extending that mindset, Shoberg Homes’ success is partly due to a vertical integration strategy that allows it to control many elements of the construction process—a winning play in an industry where less-nimble builders often oversell themselves because the demand is there.

The trajectory has been slow and steady. Matt began purchasing and renovating rental real estate for his own portfolio in 2003 while living in Lubbock, Texas. The following year he graduated from Texas Tech University with a degree in construction engineering and did a brief stint in commercial construction, followed in 2005 by a move to Austin, where he continued to buy and renovate houses. Paige, an Austin native, is a pro in her own right, having grown up in a construction family spanning three generations. By 2007, “we decided to give it a go on our own,” Matt says. That year they built and sold their first luxury spec house near the Austin Country Club, which caught the attention of a client who hired them to build a new home.

“We introduced him to an architect we knew through a small network we had at the time, Jim LaRue,” says Matt, who was then 27. “He designed an amazing home that made the 2010 AIA tour. About 3,000 people came through, mostly in the architecture community. It was a big springboard for us, introducing us as a young, energetic builder.”

It was an inauspicious time to start a construction company, on the cusp of the 2008 housing crash. But the couple slowly began to form relationships with prominent architecture firms such as Lake Flato, Alterstudio, A Parallel Architecture, and others. As the economy recovered, business began to grow. Over the next five years they took on one or two custom homes at a time, with Matt handling construction and Paige keeping the books, coordinating projects, and doing some interior design. In 2011 they hired their first project manager, and then more field personnel. Doug Tumlin joined them in 2017 and soon rose to vice president of operations. And in 2019, Scott Griffin was hired as a production manager. Having trained as an architect and run his own design/build firm for 18 years, working in Houston’s gated communities, he was quickly promoted to vice president of construction. 

Deep Dive

And so, by 2018, with two executives providing solid management support, Shoberg Homes was positioned to grow exponentially in tandem with market demands. Indeed, the abundant opportunities mean that most of their projects are within a 5-mile radius of the office, except for a concentration of custom houses in the Driftwood Golf & Ranch Club community about 20 miles south. “Except for continuing to service Driftwood, we have no aspirations to grow outside of Austin,” Matt says.

In addition to expanding the revenue stream, the Service & Maintenance division, launched in 2020, allows them to keep client relationships going. “It’s a differentiator as well,” Matt says. “People like the person who built the house to be involved in its upkeep, and we benefit from the relationship because they let us show their home to potential clients or architects, even from 10 years ago.” A dedicated service manager has the company’s labor force at his disposal. “Because we have 11 carpenters, he can take two or three without affecting production,” Matt says. “He also works with our subcontractor base to maintain systems such as HVAC quarterly and semi-annually. And we will do small projects for past clients.”

While Shoberg Homes is fortunate to attract top talent at the management and master carpentry levels, Austin’s subcontractor market is thin, and costs are evidence of that, Matt says. An in-house millwork operation started in 2021 helps ease the pressure to source outside partners. The Shop Fine Millwork employs an additional 14 craftsmen, allowing the company to control quality, scheduling, and costs on these homes that are typically fitted with bespoke materials. “Continuing to integrate vertically is an important part of our vision,” Matt says. “We’ll continue to pour effort into the finish work in our homes, adding more artisan trades such as plaster and paint, and potentially solid surfaces like tile, all the things you see and touch.”

The shop is just one way to avoid a pitfall that can catch out less-astute local builders—overpromising and under-delivering. “There are more clients than qualified builders to handle demand,” Matt says. “You can sell into a market void that’s there; the challenge is being able to perform. I’ve avoided that like the plague because it’s the catalyst for failure. The product will not be good enough for a discriminating client, and you’ll get a black eye. Austin is a small, tight-knit community even though it’s big, and is architecturally significant. There’s a lot of conversation. If you trip up on the opportunity that’s out there, you can set yourself up for disaster. We set clear boundaries on what we can do.”

Managing client expectations is another way to mark those boundaries. Even the most affluent clients are surprised at what it costs to build a house, he says. “Many builders underquote, but you always have to answer that question later. The client ends up paying for it, but they’re not happy, or they can’t pay it, so the quality has to dip.”

Shoberg’s cost-plus fee model is meant to create transparency. “Early on we take them through several homes, both finished and under construction. They’ll say they like this or that. Then we have a real conversation about the range of what it might cost to build something similar.” He and Doug prepare a preconstruction cost analysis for the clients, comparing their project with one they’ve built in the past, before delving into line-item pricing. 

“Prior to sending it out for bid, we do an internal deep dive into their specific project and share it with them. That’s another gut check on whether the project is in line with their budget expectations.” If it’s not, but is close, a value engineering session explores ways to shave cost, looking at structure, finishes, materials, and square footage. Robust management technologies are another lever at their disposal. Recently the company upgraded to Procore, a platform that many commercial companies use to increase operational efficiency. 

To Market

It is this rigor that keeps architects returning; Matt estimates they’ve completed about 50 projects with architects in Austin. And while their portfolio overflows with enviable imagery, the focus on performance allows them to market through networking and word of mouth rather than relying heavily on social media and other overt forms of promotion. “We want the story to be told by what we do, not by what we say we do,” he says. “The story will tell itself, but you have to be patient.”

Their story also resonates with Realtors. Like most builders, they are deeply entwined with the real estate community. Paige, Doug, and marketing director Tina Romero are licensed Realtors with Moreland Properties, in effect extending an open invitation for one-stop services: When a past client wants to sell their house, it’s natural to turn to a known entity or to ask for help finding a lot and studying constructability. 

Meanwhile, the company’s organizational structure provides a firm footing for continued smart growth. “I believe I can see where we’ll be in five years, but my team is the real gears getting us there,” Matt says. While he plans to limit the number of projects to 10 to maintain the personal touch, he will likely pursue larger projects in the next decade, supported by an evolving finish shop.

“It sounds like a cliché but it’s not: We want to be considered the best by setting high expectations and exceeding them,” he says, “to be transparent and trustworthy while performing among the best in the country.”

The post Pro-File Build: Shoberg Homes appeared first on Residential Design.

Craig moved to Austin, Texas, where he worked in design/build for the noted multidisciplinary firms Jay Hargrave Architecture and TOM HURT Architecture. It was his post-graduate education in design and construction. Meanwhile, Robby stayed in North Carolina, honing his skills in the office of modernist Michael Ross Kersting in Wilmington, along with Raleigh’s Clearscapes Art + Architecture and the design/build firm Tonic Design & Construction.

Along the way, each remodeled his own personal dwelling, learning firsthand how to transform a space for the better. “We practiced the slow flip,” says Craig. “We developed our own homes—one room at a time.” Adds Robby, “You really learn about space by living in it.”

Doing it for themselves—controlling the direction, design, and craft—made a powerful impression and established the ultimate trajectory for their careers. So when Craig decided to return to North Carolina and join Robby in Raleigh, where they both grew up, he secured his contractor’s license right away. (“Architects are good test takers,” he quips.) And he sold his house back in Austin to help seed their new joint venture—a design/build firm in the rapidly growing Research Triangle region. 

Newly minted as Raleigh Architecture Company (RACo.) and Raleigh Construction Company (RCCo.), the two embarked on the usual array of small remodeling jobs for clients, but they had bigger plans in mind. 

Fraternal Twins

Entrepreneurial architects long ago figured out that underwriting their own design opportunities can pay off in myriad ways. To catapult their new businesses forward, Craig and Robby knew they had to show what they could do, unmoored from the constraints of clients’ budget and program needs. 

To that end, they searched for a piece of property in downtown Raleigh with the goal of designing and building a house for Robby. The property they located could, with some ingenuity, accommodate two dwellings with a shared courtyard space, but they needed another client/buyer to make the finances work. They found that buyer through social media. Completed in 2013, the project, dubbed the Edentwins because of its location on East Edenton Street, promptly earned state and regional AIA awards. 

And it impressed renowned regional Modernist Frank Harmon, FAIA, who wrote a letter this year in support of the firm’s winning Kamphoefner Prize application. The prize, which Frank had won in 1995, is bestowed by AIA North Carolina for sustained contribution to Modern architecture in the state. 

“I first noticed the work of Raleigh Architecture Company before I knew who they were,” wrote Frank in his recommendation. “Driving down Edenton Street in Raleigh one Sunday morning in 2013, I noticed a pair of Modern houses on a slight hill above the street. To me these houses […] spoke to the fundamentals of Modern design. They were handsome standing on their own, but clearly part of the city context. When I later learned that the designers were a local firm, I realized that Raleigh had a new voice in architecture.” 

For RACo./RCCo., developing some of their own projects became an important means of expressing that voice. Says Robby, “Edentwins was our first new, ground-up project. And we weren’t sure if we were going to weave development into our overall business plan, but it fortifies all the rest of what we are doing. Developing gives us a way of completely understanding the construction of a project. And that allows us to speak intelligently about how our clients approach the process—because they are investors and developers, too.”

Building Bridges

The quest to understand every element of design and construction is core to every good design/build firm, but not everyone invests the time and money in learning how make it a viable business. Craig and Robby have sought mentors and good advice from the get-go. And they’ve been careful to maintain fruitful relationships with architecture school classmates, who’ve dispersed and achieved across the country, as well as former employers who’ve been generous with guidance and peers in the profession. They’ve also hired paid consultants.

“We’ve used business coaches for years,” says Robby. “But what sets us apart is that we really prepared for this. We went our separate ways to separate places and learned different things. Being apart allowed us to be together and understand how to work together.” 

They’ve had the good luck, as well, to ride the upswing of the Triangle region, where there’s no shortage of smart, savvy potential clients. “There are 8 to 10 universities near here and among the highest percentage of Ph.D.s in the country,” Robby notes. “And there’s also a strong design lineage and tradition of Modern design. There was already a movement in process here when we started, and the tech industry has continued to build here. We had more of an opportunity to help represent that movement here than a place like Austin, Texas.”

Among their clients—especially on the light commercial side—are other entrepreneurs and creatives. The firm has adapted several older buildings into vibrant, award-winning retail and gathering places, including the repurposing of a notable Midcentury bank building by F. Carter Williams into The Vault, a bottle shop and community space, and Hartwell, a former neighborhood market, into a maker and event space. Their own building, 716 Offices, was a mechanic’s garage they transformed into a light-flooded collaborative workspace, filling the former garage bays with operable glazing.  

New custom homes and substantial remodels still comprise an important place in the portfolio—including another duplex house project for Robby—but they’ve been joined by larger-scale townhouse and multifamily work in a roughly 50/50 percentage. It’s enough to keep the small company, which is capped at about 10, very busy. “We’re intentionally small, because we want to run a practice where everyone can participate,” says Robby. “We have two staff for Raleigh Architecture and six staff for Raleigh Construction, plus ourselves.”

Adds Craig, “We don’t want to get too big. We want to retain direct control of all the pieces so we can stay on track with a project in real time. If I have a structural question, I can call my engineer or my framer. It’s not just about finances, it’s about all the pieces. That’s how we hone the craft.”

As they wrote in their Kamphoefner award entry: “The best builders have a great eye for design and understand architecture. Similarly, the best architects understand how to build.”

The post Pro-File Design/Build: The Raleigh Architecture Company + Raleigh Construction Company appeared first on Residential Design.

The custom building side of the company has been at it for nearly 40 years and the design side for 27. With 70 employees, it’s not a small operation, and yet it manages to stay nimble with a culture of cooperation with other builders, architects, and artisans. Says Brian Mac, FAIA, the company’s head of design and chief spokesperson, “We try to be friends with everybody. We figure if we can build a community with other builders and architects, we’ll be able to take opportunities as they come along. Maybe they will want to use our woodshop. Our market is not that big. We learned a long time ago that if we adopt a competitive attitude, we confine ourselves to a niche market. We are willing to take on anything interesting that looks to add value.”

For the client, that means you don’t have to take the whole Birdseye package. Birdseye the builder will construct houses by other architects, and Birdseye the architect will design houses for other builders to construct. And a client’s builder can turn to Birdseye for anything on its menu of individual services, including site work, metalwork, and the aforementioned woodwork. 

So far, this à la carte approach has kept the company, now an ESOP, busy. And its size offers upward mobility in a variety of trade and professional areas. Always reaching for the best execution in craft and design tends to attract the people who care about doing great work—learning more and stretching themselves. Brian sums it up: “We want to work in cool places, with cool people, on cool projects.”

Hammer in Hand

Brian, who grew up in Michigan and worked at large firm Quinn Evans after completing architecture school, made his way east to learn the craft of building. Vermont, with its strong artisan tradition, was a natural destination. “I didn’t want to go back into the office environment—into the monoculture of an architecture office,” he recalls. “I wanted to understand how to build. I wanted my hands acquainted with a hammer. There’s a history of design­build in the Mad River Valley—a legacy of craft and construction.”

Brian worked for a residential construction company for a couple of years before meeting Birdseye owners Jim Converse and John Seibert while playing hockey. Jim and John had been friends and business partners since graduating from the University of Vermont. “Like everything here, the idea of opening an architecture division was very organic,” says Brian. “So that’s what I did 27 years ago. Right now, we have seven full-time people on the architecture side—five licensed ones, two trying to get licensed, and two interns for the summer. 

“We’re trying to establish a strong culture around the workload,” he adds. “We don’t hire for the project, we hire for the workload. Because I’ve gone through so many cycles in the economy, I know that while we’re busy now, there were times when we were struggling to get work.”

And that’s part of the resilience a design-build model offers residential professionals—one side of the house can smooth bumps in business for the other. Birdseye’s construction side also has a property management division to service the houses it builds. Even in recessions, houses need care and attention. This is especially true of second homes, which comprise about half of the company’s project portfolio.

If a local slowdown were to hit Vermont, the architecture division is prepared to work further afield and has designed projects in the Hamptons and Rhode Island. “We have a really cool project going in Columbus, Indiana,” Brian notes. “We’re working with another design-build firm and they’re doing the drawings. I see those types of collaborations as an opportunity. We would be open to taking on a project in, say, California. But, on the building side, it’s difficult to take people out of our region and away from their families.”

Supporting the private lives and diverse interests of its employees has been a priority at Birdseye since Day One. “When I started on the building side, the company worked four 10-hour days and took Fridays off. We’ve been doing it as a company for 40 years,” Brian explains. “It made sense from a construction standpoint, that the painters or other trades could come in on Friday. Then our people have a weekday to go ski or whatever. They have one day they can count on when the kids are in school and they can really get things done. We’re all pretty avid outdoors people here, we aren’t killing ourselves. If you are enjoying living here, you will bring your A game to work.”

Authorship and Authenticity

Is the best architecture determined by how recognizable the architecture firm is that designed it? Must it reflect a singular style or point of view that advances and innovates over time? Birdseye’s design work has certainly evolved over the course of its nearly 30 years, but it also shows a willingness to explore different ideas and, gasp, different precedents. And then, sometimes, a client just wants something that looks like a barn. 

For Birdseye Architecture’s part, they are on board for any project that will challenge them professionally and put them in the path of creative clients intent on building something meaningful. Maybe that barn will turn out to be a live-work studio, as was the case with the 2009 Music Barn, made from a reclaimed timber frame structure fitted out with professional recording equipment and acoustics.  

Or maybe it will become the 2019 Bank Barn project, a Net-Zero retirement home for a cosmopolitan couple returning from a lifetime of work abroad. The Bank Barn garnered numerous regional and local awards and attracted extensive national press coverage. Its timeless, iconic shape resonates with nearly everyone, while advancing the discussion of what modern life can and should look like. 

The 10 years between the two barn-inspired projects shows a big leap forward in Birdseye’s confidence as architects. Although it’s always tricky to discern why the recipe of architect, client, builder, site, and budget results in such a marked departure from prior work, it’s still possible to follow various breadcrumbs along the way that led to this point. 

Brian cites the 2017 Woodshed project as a personal and professional epiphany, while graciously crediting the clients for setting the bar high. “The clients were from Boston and were well versed in architecture,” he recalls. “They had a bigger library about architecture than I did. Their knowledge made me understand I don’t know everything about architecture. They gave me an opportunity to come up with an idea that we may not have thought of. They became great collaborators. The project got a lot of press and won a lot of awards. And it settled in my head that there is an artfulness to what we can do—connecting the familiar with the unique. It helped give me a language around what we’re doing. And it gave me a clearer path for how to move forward and how to talk about what we’re doing.”

From Woodshed and Bank Barn in rural Vermont to the 2020 Lathhouse in the Hamptons—another multiple award-winning, agrarian-modern house—the design language has grown more fluent and melodic each time. 

But just when you think you know what to expect from the firm, they come up with something completely different. The 2021 Terrapin house is nobody’s barn—instead, it’s a full-on machine for immersion in the verdant Vermont landscape. Look more closely at the portfolio, however, and you’ll find its DNA in Mural House and Vista House.

“I look at our portfolio as our datum for where we are,” Brian explains. “What are the common elements of what we are doing, and how do we take those and not make it look the same? How do we get to the unattainable level, while always trying to get there? 

“By building a team around you that can allow you to think that way,” he says, answering his own question. “We have extraordinary talent around here that can take on the blocking of incredible ideas. And it enables a much bigger stance in taking on more ambitious projects.”

A Thousand Words

Yes, it’s critical for an architecture firm to learn how to talk about its houses and to find a language for how it turns ideas and concepts into reality. The skill is important for speaking with clients, the press, building departments, and skeptical neighbors. And just as a house is a story of the family who lives there, the firm’s portfolio is the story of its trajectory in architecture.

Part of Birdseye’s success derives from its eloquence with words and visual language, of course, but a key element has been its commitment to documenting its portfolio with top-notch photography. It shines the light on what the firm has done and is doing, connecting all the dots into a sophisticated continuity.  

“We typically will go into the project telling the client that we have to photograph it,” Brian says. “Because in the end, all we have are the drawings and the photographs—they are the archive of our work. You walk away with a photograph, and that’s all you get. And I love working with photographers, because you see the work through others’ eyes and you see the art unfold before you.” It, too, tells the story of the house.

Design Build Design

When skilled, dedicated players are involved, design-build can result in a virtuous circle, bringing out the best in all and keeping the endeavor authentic—in service to the client, appropriate to the place, but always with the goal of lifting everyone a little higher. 

“Rather than just being stylistic about architecture, we think about the craft of it,” Brian says. “We try to make sense of the vision, and how architecture can play into the art of living and really inspire people in the way they live. People long for the familiar but also something of this moment. It’s all about our editing process and how we bring that concept to life.”

The post Pro-File Design/Build: Birdseye appeared first on Residential Design.

Architecture was always in the cards for principal Celeste Robbins, AIA. Growing up in Ohio, she was fascinated not by the clichéd Legos, but by space-making with endless blanket forts and outdoor refuges tucked among trees. An entrepreneurial spirit accompanied her talent in physics and art; she frequently canvassed her neighborhood selling “literally anything I could get my hands on,” she says.

Celeste entered The Ohio State University to study engineering, but while touring the office of an architect who worked with her father, a civil engineer-turned-facility planner at Goodyear, she caught sight of architectural models and drawings and changed course. 

She transferred to Cornell University, where her family hoped its robust architecture program would strengthen her job prospects; her mother worked three jobs to help pay tuition. The bet paid off. Upon graduation, Celeste moved to Boston and worked largely in higher education design for Michael Dennis, Jeffrey Clark & Associates, Shepley Bulfinch, and Perkins&Will.

After several years, the Midwest beckoned her back. She relocated to Perkins&Will’s Chicago office, where she worked until her first child was born. Around that time, she found a kindred spirit in Berta Shapiro, who was launching a new career in interior design. As Celeste helped Berta with drawings, Berta became her unofficial mentor in residential design. “We pulled the best from each other out,” Celeste says. “My takeaway was an understanding about how a home lives. When you walk into a room, where do you want to sit? What do you want to see? How do you have a good conversation? These things are about life and not something you learn at Cornell.”

With her formal training in architecture and her informal training in creating warm, livable spaces, Celeste opened her own practice at 30. Finding work was no problem—Berta’s  glowing recommendations led Celeste to many choice commissions, including a condo renovation for actor John Cusack and a gut renovation of a house in Winnetka, on Chicago’s North Shore. Clients would recommend Celeste to their friends and become repeat clients themselves.

For nearly a decade, Celeste handled everything on her own, from client meetings to construction administration to billing. Her typical work hours fell between 8 p.m. and 1 a.m., while her young children slept. But architecture was her essence—her “lung,” she calls it. “I loved every minute of all of it.”

Big Break

Celeste’s efforts in the Winnetka renovation led to her first ground-up commission for the same client, this time in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Berta designed the home’s interiors. “They didn’t interview anyone else,” Celeste says.

Understanding that this site was one the family intentionally chose as their destination, their retreat, Celeste focused on designing a home for relaxation and enjoyment of life. The ranch-inspired structure blends modernism with the rugged forms of the region’s dude ranches and the adjacent mountains of Grand Teton National Park. Completed in 2006, Home on the Ranch was published in Architectural Digest, giving national exposure to Celeste and her design aesthetic. The project, which also led to her first staff hires, demonstrated that Robbins Architecture could design homes anywhere. Today, the firm has completed projects across the country, including in Idaho, Colorado, Michigan, and New York.

Design Flexibility

Prospective clients often approach Robbins Architecture after seeing its portfolio of modern homes interwoven in breathtaking composition with nature. But Celeste doesn’t believe they are seeking a particular architecture style or formal design statement. Instead, she says, they want a home they can enter, “have their shoulders drop, and feel like they’re where they can recharge.”

This is perhaps what distinguishes Celeste’s approach to modernism. Yes, her houses sit typically low to the ground and embrace daylighting, open floor plans, clean lines, and expansive glazing that merges indoor and outdoor spaces. But she also adapts each design to the site and ultimately to what the owner wants without concern about maintaining any formalism.

Unlike one of her own influences, Frank Lloyd Wright, who was notorious for commanding design control even post-occupancy, Celeste welcomes client input. The results balance her design principles with the client’s lifestyle. “That’s where the warmth and richness comes in—that real honesty to how people live,” she says. “The home is not forcing them into something.”

Confident of her core design values—continuous connection to the site, organic movement through a space, a layout that “unfolds” for its residents, and homage to artistry and craft—she is unfazed when her clients present a late-game challenge. “If the client says, ‘Oh, I actually want this over here,’” she explains, “it’s not going to unravel this whole setup that you’ve done.”

Such a change occurred at a house on Chicago’s North Shore for client Robyn Tavel and her family. While standing on-site with Celeste at the location of her future office, Robyn admired a nearby bridge and ravine and said, “‘Celeste, you told me how much you loved the bridge that you can see from your house and how it’s lit at night,’” she recalls. “‘Now we’re looking at the bridge by my house. Instead of the wall here, why wouldn’t we make this a window?’ And Celeste said, ‘Absolutely. Let’s do that.’”

Robyn now savors the time at her floating desk, gazing out through her floor-to-ceiling window wall. “When you walk into the office,” she says, “it seems like the exterior is inside.”

Celeste feels a particular sense of pride whenever she hears a client proclaim, “This was my idea!” “It probably was their idea,” she affirms, “and I used it, and the project is even richer for it.” 

Test of Time

Perhaps the greatest validation of Robbins Architecture’s work is its success long after the housewarmings end. Nearly eight years after moving in, Tavel continues to relish the experience of coming home. “In one word,” she says, “I feel happiness.” 

Celeste knows this firsthand, having designed her own home in 2010 on Chicago’s North Shore. The project exemplifies Midcentury Modern—asymmetry, extensive use of glass and wood, clean lines, and rectilinear volumes—while mixing in a few idiosyncrasies, like a ledge on the staircase that Celeste admits “makes no sense,” but adds a soulful element that assures you not everything is perfectly formulated.

At the time, her neighborhood was full of more traditional-style architecture, so when she opened her home as part of a school-fundraising tour, curious onlookers who had watched its construction lined up. To Celeste’s delight, the air was soon filled with “I didn’t know I would like modern,” “It’s so warm,” and “I could live here.”

Her house became a calling card for attracting clients, including Tavel. And Celeste realized that her work as an architect stood out to people. “I never let go of that,” she says. “I made sure everything would have that warmth, and I would never rely on something just because I did it before.”

Furthermore, her home was the start of a longtime collaboration with builder Jake Goldberg, president of Chicago-based Goldberg General Contracting, Inc., which has worked on four homes with Robbins Architecture. “Working together is great because Celeste often asks us to get involved very early on in the projects,” Jake says. Whenever the owner, architect, and contractor “can rely on each other for opinions and advice, they have a vested interest [in the project] because they’re going to be working together.”

Along with regular check-ins with the contractor for insights on pricing, buildability, and potential leads, Celeste engages other collaborators early in the design process. From the first sketch of the project, her team is already envisioning how a project might relate best to its natural surrounds. By the time the landscape architect enters the picture, the team has already started a dialogue on how a project interior and exterior might interweave, providing ideas for the landscape architect to take to the next level. “Whatever they do always makes it better,” Celeste says. “Nature is timeless. You’re never going to regret a house you designed in the ’90s if nature remains the focal point.”

The firm also specifies materials that are contextual to their environment. Natural stone makes appearances in the form of paneling, surfaces, seating, flooring, and stair treads. The project in Jackson Hole uses stained cedar, while a cottage on Lake Michigan uses cedar shakes. At a spacious summer retreat north of Chicago, vertical recesses hand chiseled into the fossil-imprinted limestone cladding imbue a human scale. For a home in Aspen, Colorado, nestled in the Rocky Mountains, the firm used board-formed concrete to withstand the harsh climate. “We wanted the texture of wood, and the color is beautiful with the mountains,” Celeste says.

Not surprisingly for a firm in Greater Chicago, the influence of Prairie-style architecture can also be seen, through such elements as long lines and deep overhangs that help shield building materials and the interior from precipitation and harsh summer sun. “It’s practical, smart, and also beautiful,” Jake says.

Architecture as Business

Perhaps from her early days of selling wares to her neighbors, Celeste has always felt comfortable engaging with clients. But as her firm grew to 10 employees plus outside consultants working across multiple projects, she had to learn how to manage a business—something historically not taught in architecture schools. Celeste often spends her free time reading business and motivational books. “I take it as an honor that people choose to come to work in this office,” she says. “I want them to feel that they are challenged and that they enjoy what they do.”

An active member of the design community, Celeste participates in AIA Chicago’s Custom Residential Architects Network, which she co-chaired for three years; the Chicago-Midwest Institute of Classical Architecture & Art; and the Design Leadership Network (DLN), which hosts national events for firm leaders and executives in architecture, interior design, and landscape architecture, as well as more intimate gatherings among peer groups.

From these meetings, Celeste became inspired and motivated to publish a monograph of her firm’s work. “I’m proud of our projects and I wanted them to be more available to be seen,” she says. A DLN peer recommended a book agent, who agreed to work with Celeste.

Recently released by Monacelli, “The Meaningful Modern Home: Soulful Architecture and Interiors” collects nine Robbins Architecture homes across the country. It entailed more than two years of preparation by Celeste and a team of collaborators, including a writer, editor, and graphic designer. She also hired a photographer and stylist to capture the experience of living in a home by her firm beyond the documentation of its architecture.

Not only was she delighted to revisit her projects, one of which had been lived in for 17 years at this point, but she revamped her firm’s website with the new imagery to “communicate what I saw to the world.” Now decades into cultivating her aesthetic and brand, she knew she wanted to convey the warmth, softness, and livability her modernism delivers, along with her joy in creating architecture that fulfills her clients’ goals and desires.

“People walk away liking to work with us because they got the house they wanted,” Celeste says. “They know their home was a passion that we lived and breathed for them.”

The post Pro-File Design: Robbins Architecture appeared first on Residential Design.

Chad Rollins (left) and Scott Edwards set Dovetail on a new path when they bought the then-20-year-old company from their former boss in 2011. Photography: Jill Hardy. 

Dovetail is a dynamic company that has translated its original name into a well-honed working philosophy. “The wood shop was a component of the previous inception and is part of where the company name came from,” Scott says. “But we have a different connotation for it now: being that strengthful joint that unites the design and execution and management of work and can lock it all together. We expanded it to how we see ourselves in the building scene.”

The past decade has been a transformative period at Dovetail. With about 100 employees working in an adaptive reuse waterfront building in Seattle’s Ballard neighborhood, the company has built a robust regional presence. The partners attribute that to three concepts: a servant leadership approach to management, well-defined processes that are continually being assessed and improved, and attracting talented people by providing mentorship, a clear path for professional growth, and a competitive compensation package—the things people need to be successful outside of work.

To understand how they got here, one need only look at the partners’ own turning points. When Scott was recruited away to the framing world in the early 2000s, it was an opportunity to learn how to run a larger construction firm of about 300 people. “It wasn’t running well, and a consultant hired me to come and fix the problems,” he says. After a time, however, “I had a question in my soul about what I was working on. Dovetail felt better from many standpoints.”

One reason was that when Scott left Dovetail, they had been building Craftsman-style homes. While he was away, Chad had begun to nudge the umwelt in a different direction: Scott returned to a company that architects trusted with the complexities of modern design. “I wanted to be involved with a group performing at a higher level,” Scott says. 

Chad had similar moments of clarity in his career path. Miller Hull’s public projects had three- to five-year timelines from concept to completion. His desire to be closer to the work and to precise craftsmanship led him away from architecture to general contracting.

Purchasing the business in the aftermath of the housing crash presented a sink-or-swim opportunity to examine what they did best and, as Chad says, “tweak all those dials going forward.” Seattle’s food culture was exploding, so they developed relationships with restaurateurs and others in the commercial industry. “We were working with architects trying to muscle their way through the downturn,” he says. “We found that our system transferred from residential to commercial work seamlessly. Carpenters in the field were able to bring something special on their own accord. And to have our work be more public was nice for morale.”

As the company began to produce larger projects, the wood shop grew, acquiring more sophisticated equipment such as a CNC machine. And by 2015, with Dovetail producing shop drawings for vast amounts of metalwork, it opened its own metal shop, followed by a concrete shop in 2018. Then, the partners began hiring in a more intentional way. 

People and Process

Dovetail has grown methodically, expanding its staff by 7 or 8 percent each year. That pace gives it time to test its systems. With 10 or more active projects at a time, each job has a project manager, dedicated superintendent, foreman, and lead carpenter—and most jobs are now large enough to require a project engineer. These well-defined job descriptions create a visible path for advancement. “By building a system and investing in our people, not just financially but through our workforce, people can see how to get from laborer to carpenter 1, then to carpenter 2 and 3, then lead carpenter and foreman,” Chad says.

“If they come in as a general carpenter and are interested in concrete, they learn to specialize in that trade. The more successive people there are on a path, the more stories they have to tell people coming in. Mentoring becomes this nice connection. What I love about construction is that the skill set is handed to the next person very personally.”

Those skill sets plug into sophisticated processes that cross-pollinate the residential and commercial work. Ninety percent of Dovetail’s projects come from architects, and the team forms as soon as schematics are approved to define scope, schedule, costs, and quality. Preconstruction involves using 3D digital modeling to vet the design team’s drawings for constructability. Chad calls it the “conflict resolution process,” and it’s as important for houses as commercial projects. 

“We have a heavy hand in orchestrating mechanical, electrical, and plumbing systems,” he says. “Engineers might not be in sync with the architecture, so we’re working closely with the architects to preserve design intention, and with our subcontractors, looking at potential conflicts that will hold up construction and getting it resolved beforehand.”

The 50-50 partners prefer staying close to the work. While Chad oversees process, systems, and technical building proficiencies, Scott heads up human resources and team building. They share tasks such as business development, management, and team leadership. Synergy is a catalyst for growth, and the partners like to stir the pot. 

Dovetail’s ideal project mix is 75 percent residential, 25 percent commercial, because with their longer timeline, houses offer more stability than commercial work. A $7 million house might take 20 months to build, whereas a $7 million restaurant goes up in seven months, Scott says. “Commercial work is fast and complex; we are successful in it because of the sophistication of what we’re working on residentially. Bringing our expertise of craft to commercial projects elevates those projects, maybe through an idea or a hand on the site that makes it better.” The benefits go both ways.

Commercial work has influenced how they manage residential projects by teaching them how to push scheduling and move shop drawings through quickly. The diversity keeps them learning and growing.

Dovetail’s scripted rigor sets the homeowners up for success, too. Year after year, the company refines its templates by keeping track of the things that put pressure on a project, such as not having budget conversations early enough; when people want to move too quickly and skip some of the process; or scope creep during construction. Although every project is a prototype, when clients request changes midstream, previous experience allows the team to adjust quickly. “You can tweak a system when you’re consistent with it, make improvements, lean into it, see what’s working,” says Scott.

The biggest component—and client stressor—is the home’s price tag, of course. “It’s probably one of the most unsavory parts of the conversation,” Chad says. “If we can come together early and vet that design against our historical knowledge of what it takes to build these projects, it makes the team stronger and healthier, because everyone is informed and expectations are aligned. Everyone wants cool things, but they cost money. At any time, we’re building five to seven projects, and also pricing five to seven projects, so we have a pretty deep understanding of what it will take.”

As a bonus, many Dovetail employees come from architectural backgrounds and work hard to find economies while preserving the design intent. “Sometimes just changing the methodology of how something is built puts it at a price point that’s achievable,” he adds.

Locked In

During the pandemic, many businesses were forced to work smarter on the fly. For Dovetail it was a chance to test how well its systems and values held up to adversity. One change the partners made was to procure materials earlier, asking clients to provide temporary storage if necessary and building that cost into the project budget. “The sanity of knowing the material was in our hands was a way to mitigate some of the supply chain issues,” Chad says. They’re also more cognizant now of protecting the health of the group. That means encouraging people to stay home when they’re sick, or Zooming instead of meeting in person. 

Challenges notwithstanding, Dovetail is on the move. Not for the first time, they have outgrown a building. The wood shop will soon expand into an adaptive reuse building at Interbay, just across the ship channel from the office, where it will share a former car storage facility with a brewing company. Historically, moves have occurred every five or six years as the enterprise evolved. “The concrete shop is managed inside our building, and I envision a day when concrete will need its own space,” Chad says.

Looking ahead, Dovetail is positioned to compete as modernist houses become increasingly complicated to build. And as with residential projects, the partners will continue to look for commercial brands that share their values and vision, and for whom design and craft matter to the success of their clients’ businesses. An example is Filson, maker of durable outdoor wear. Dovetail has built Filson projects in Seattle and New York City. Both designed by Seattle-based Heliotrope Architects, the stores’ rustic-refined casework, exposed timber, and metal and brick wood-burning fireplaces create a clear perception of the brand. Dovetail likes working with clients who share their preference for reusing historic buildings—such as the Fremont Collective project—and environmental focus, such as the Klotski Building, with its water collection and recycling systems. Restaurateurs who provide creative food will always be an appealing clientele, too. 

“I love the hierarchy of a restaurant in terms of dishwasher, prepper, sous chef—people can move through the same way as we can in our system,” Scott says.  “A high-caliber chef is like a high-caliber lead carpenter. That duality is always interesting to us.”

In that way, the project types have a direct influence on the company culture, and vice versa. The goal, Scott and Chad say, is to build a strong philosophy that people can identify with, whether they are potential clients or prospective employees. Although the labor market is tight, they haven’t struggled to find talented people. “Because we have these different facets, it puts us in touch with a wide network of people. Our people have made us successful, and they become a magnetic force.”

Women make up about 18 percent of that force. They are performing at all levels, from carpenter to project manager to human resources director. Last fall, Dovetail’s wood shop hosted a workshop by women for women, in collaboration with Patagonia Seattle and Sawhorse Revolution. The latter, a nonprofit that teaches carpentry to youth, received the proceeds from ticket sales. With outreach activities like that, it’s easy to see why Chad says they consistently find young people who love this work. “Don’t give up on the younger generation,” he says. “They want to work too.”

In the simplest terms, the servant leadership model that Dovetail espouses means that the team leader’s job is to set up good days for their team, making sure they have the resources to be successful. Management fills in with people who check the boxes: who are passionate about the work, committed to personal and professional growth, and positive in the face of setbacks. “You have to be able to tell some jokes, too, have fun,” Chad quips. 

Self-assured and possessed with talent, the contractors can see a clear path forward. “We are lucky to be doing amazing work that attracts amazing people,” Scott says.

Projects Built by Dovetail

City Cabin by Olson Kundig

Reclaimed fir, milled from a 2,300-year-old slab, appears on the exterior and the kitchen island of City Cabin, designed by Olson Kundig Architects. Dovetail produced all the cabinetry and metalwork. The passive solar house also has a green roof and PV array. Photography: Aaron Leitz Photography

Homecoming Beach House by Heliotrope Architects

Dovetail’s concrete shop, Fieldworks Custom Concrete, fabricated the board-formed concrete walls, patio pavers, courtyard water feature, and driveway at  Homecoming Beach House, designed by Seattle-based Heliotrope Architects. Photography: Kevin Scott.

The Perch by Chadbourne + Doss Architects

At the Perch, overlooking the Salish Sea, the company used CNC equipment to fabricate elements such as a Corian sofa base, metal staircase rods and walnut treads that can be dismantled for maintenance, and the serpentine portions of concrete and aluminum formwork on the courtyard water feature. Photography: Kevin Scott. See our full coverage of this project here.

Whidbey Farm by mwworks

Whidbey Island Farmhouse synthesizes Dovetail’s flawless detailing of alder, teak, oak, steel, and stone. Photography: Kevin Scott. See our full coverage of this project here.

The post Pro-File Build: Dovetail General Contractors appeared first on Residential Design.

While at Centerbrook, as the firm became known after Charles moved on, Nick worked on everything from houses to “genetics laboratories.” Although working at every scale, his mentors’ approach of imbuing each building with a sense of its place, its history, and its culture became fundamental to Nick’s goals as an architect. 

When the projects became larger and more bureaucratic, with all the heartbreak that brings (multiyear endeavors unplugged at the last minute), Nick decided it was time to return to his home state. He moved his family to Austin and became his own first client in his new small residential practice. “I had the problem of having all my experience and contacts in one part of the country and none here,” he says. 

He and his wife bought a dilapidated 1919 bungalow in a dense urban neighborhood now designated the West Line Historic District, and he slowly renovated and expanded it into a remarkable house, studio, and rental apartment. Meanwhile, he built his new practice from the ground up, working with builders and doing smaller jobs for clients. “People came to me mostly for space, but it was important to me to introduce them to architecture—even just a little bit.” Twenty-five years later, clients still come to him looking for space, but they also seek out the sophisticated architecture that elevates every aspect of its experience. 

“We built the practice little by little,” he recalls, but the firm got a big boost from Austin’s long-running house tour program. “It’s one of the oldest in the country. We ended up getting a house on that tour and then later, four or five. Because of that, it’s given us publicity and exposure. What it’s meant, is that we’ve stayed busy since that home tour in 2003.”

Big Inside, Little Outside 

His own house and studio ended up on the tour, and it represents a number of the firm’s strengths: a respect and sensitivity to existing community, context, and culture and a special talent for preserving them while injecting a modern sensibility. He applies, to both renovations and new construction, modern materials and methods, adroit choreography of contemporary patterns of life, and a deft handling of spatial relationships within the house and the adjacent outdoor living areas. 

It’s readily apparent from looking at the progression of the firm’s projects that it’s perfectly capable of the kind of showcase architecture that grabs attention in the media. But while the work is always architecturally compelling and rigorous, it’s unusually modest as well. It doesn’t scream “look at me” as much as “look at a job well done.” 

This is a very deliberate direction Nick and now his daughter Jes Deaver, who joined the practice five years ago, have chosen to take. They don’t want their architecture to overwhelm and recharacterize the neighborhoods they occupy. This set of priorities is especially important as Austin’s population has grown, putting tremendous pressure on existing housing and fueling quick and often careless new construction. Builders and developers are incentivized to scrape off older houses and replace them with high-end houses that max out the buildable envelope and the potential sales price. It’s a ruinous trajectory for small-scale, older neighborhoods.

And the problem is not confined to new builds, Nick points out: “It’s becoming fashionable to put a modern addition on a historic house here, but it often results in a severe juxtaposition. Our thought is, even though we like the departure, we think we owe our clients the larger context. Even the modern addition needs to belong to the original structure. Even if it’s dramatic, it needs to belong to that house alone.”

Nick took the challenge to heart with his own house. He kept the bungalow character intact as viewed from the street and inserted a modern studio space and rental apartment underneath at the rear. A new covered porch in back also keeps the basic bungalow gable but articulates it in an abstract screen of “wind-driven vertical aluminum louvers.” Throughout, new interior spaces are bright and airy and clean, with a mix of careful, traditional detailing and fresh modern touches.  

Every choice he made was about right-sizing the new and existing spaces, and avoiding unnecessary extra rooms—or volume for the sake of volume. “We’re trying to show how we can fit within this existing context with proportion and scale. We wanted to show a modern house can belong in a historic neighborhood,” he says.

His house was not in a national historic district when he began work on it, but ultimately it was made so. So far, Austin’s historic districts have been tolerant of progress, he says, as long as it’s implemented with respect to the existing fabric.

“Not every client that comes along is completely aligned with our sensitivities,” he observes. “Sometimes it’s difficult for someone to give up tall ceilings and extra rooms. But we have techniques to give them vaulted spaces, while keeping the eaves in proportion with the scale of the neighborhood—to create a big inside and a little outside. We want to protect both the clients’ interest and the neighborhood’s interest.”

Story Time

Nick’s daughter, Jes Deaver, AIA, has brought her own sensibilities to the firm, honed by her work with a West Coast architecture firm but even more so by her background as a filmmaker and writer. Her perspective has sharpened the firm’s dedication to the process of custom design and construction, as experienced by the clients. Nicks calls it “an architectural discovery mission.”

And often that means including neighborhood stakeholders, too, so their voices and concerns are heard. This helps diffuse the adversarial relationship that can develop when change happens around the neighbors, Nick says. Adds Jes, “One thing that’s nice about that, is it allows the neighborhood to have a meaningful connection to that house. It’s a lasting relationship.” 

“When we do that with the neighbors, the zoning people, and historic commission, the only problems we are left to tackle are what to do with the land,” Nick concludes.

With clients, Nick and Jes aim for a good balance of letting them in on some of the challenges of design decision making, but not so much they lose confidence. “They are part of our architectural team—we don’t want design to be a mystery. We want to go on a journey with them,” says Nick. “They will watch us struggle, but not so much that they get discouraged or worried.”

During that process, Nick and Jes try to tease out memories from their clients that they can use to make their home more personal and resonant. A case in point: “We were designing an addition to a client’s grandfather’s house,” Nick recalls. “She recounted a tree she used to love that was no longer there. So we designed in a detail that evoked a tree. And now every time she walks through the house with someone, she always tells that story. It became a part of the story of the house.”

“By connecting clients to the story we’re telling through the design, it gives them a story to tell and a language to describe how they love their house that they can share with others,” says Jes. “It adds to the excitement they have when others experience the spaces, too.”

To read more of our coverage of RaveOn, Shibui, and Lean Too, click on the links below:

RaveOn

Shibui

LeanToo

The post Pro-File Design: Nick Deaver Architect appeared first on Residential Design.