The Spring St Residence is a complete gut renovation of an 1820’s row house in the Nolita neighborhood of New York City into a 4000 square foot single-family residence with a ground floor retail/commercial space. The original first floor of the house was a parlor level floor a half level up from the street, so we restructured the entire building and added two stories to the building as well as an urban roof garden. The street level became a retail space with a custom blackened steel storefront as well as the private entrance to the house. We also excavated down to add a full basement below with a new two-story high private den. Because of the typical urban challenge of light, air, and privacy, we lifted the main living levels up an additional story so the living room, dining area, and kitchen are on the third floor with a private master suite on the fourth level above the noise and dust of the street. The details are all modern and many of them are custom designed and fabricated for this project including the steel windows and steel and wood staircases. The addition of three large skylights also add an enormous amount of light into several interior areas that would normally have been dark.

The Lake Santeetlah Residence is a renovation of and addition to a modest forty-year old cottage on the shores of a man-made lake in western North Carolina.  Surrounded by Joyce Kilmer National Forest, the new house takes advantage of the unspoiled views of the surrounding mountains and deep waters of the lake. The second story addition raises the living spaces of the house and allows all of the newly created lower-level bedrooms direct access to and views of the lake. The dark palette of the black-oiled shou sugi ban siding and the forest green windows recede into the forested setting of the lake as well as providing a low maintenance home that will hopefully last for future generations.

The Waterlane Residence is a 6500 square foot private residence on the shores of Mahone Bay in Nova Scotia. It’s in-town location – near the town ferry and adjacent to a major pedestrian thoroughfare – provided a series of challenges for the design and the construction of the house. Moreover, the complexities of building so close to the water in a climate that faces the occasional hurricane also strongly shaped its expression. The design and materiality of the house was thus born from a series of oppositions – town v. water, public v. private, industrial v. residential, close v. distant, traditional v. modern, and open v. closed (vis a vis weather, views, and water access) – that all pressured the eventual form of the house.

The very public nature of the compact site engendered a more traditional and private “back” of the house as it faces the town and the neighbors but opens up to a much more open, glassy and modern expression on the water side. The materials and forms of the house are typical and traditional for the area – cedar shingle siding and cedar shake roofs – but the detailing is crisply modern and takes advantage of advances in construction materials and technology. The Great Room pavilion is the embodiment of the project – closed and guarded with high windows on the town/ferry side and clothed in stone and shingle, it is all glass, windows, doors, deck and views to the water.

The Round Hill Residence is a Work in Progress scheduled to be completed in the spring of 2024.  It is a new construction residential project within the Stoneleigh Country Club in Round Hill, Virginia.  Sitting on a property that sits with both views of the course and distant views of the Blue Ridge mountains, the house responds to both the local and the general site and context. The style of the house also bridges between a more agrarian past and a more modern present with barn-like geometries that give way to large expanses of glass and wood and stone that frame views and spaces for the owners. The spaces are designed similarly with large wide open spaces for living and smaller, private spaces for work or contemplation.  One of the most interesting spaces is the sunken courtyard that opens out from the Home Gym in the basement – it will be lushly landscaped with interesting building textures (board formed concrete, shou sugi ban siding, local bluestone) and open to the sun and sky above.

The Vincent Court Residence is a speculative project built on a small in-town lot in a north shore suburban Chicago town. It was targeted toward a young family, new home buyer that was looking for a location within walking distance of the town and the commuter train into Chicago. With that younger suburban audience in mind, the house was a mixture of traditional architectural elements and materials and a more modern, open plan – open kitchen, large family room, opening onto the garden and back yard.

PROJECT BY HAN ARCHIBALD DESIGN

The Canyons Residence is a ski-in, ski-out residence located on 5 acres within The Colony/Canyons Resort in Park City, Utah. The house was designed as a series of five pavilions, each thought of as a separate programmatic piece – entry/library, kitchen/dining, great room, bedrooms, and garage – that responds to different parts of the site and to diverse views. Each pavilion is sited for an optimal combination of location, topography, views, micro-environment (trees vs open space), and privacy. Whereas very public elements such as the great room are sited to take advantage of the most spectacular open views of the distant Uintas mountain range as well as access to the adjacent ski slopes, more private areas like the bedrooms are placed to provide serene wooded views and peaceful privacy. In addition to the large public spaces, the final design includes six bedrooms with a bunk room for eight, ten bathrooms, four fireplaces, a spa with a sauna and a large steam room and an outdoor hot tub, and a three-car garage. The design also includes a plan for future expansion with a guest house and additional enclosed parking.

PROJECT BY HAN ARCHIBALD DESIGN

The Catskills Residence is a 2250 square foot house vacation home designed for a young couple that was moving out of the bustle of New York City to the relative peace and solitude of upstate New York. Drawing on the agrarian architecture of the area, the house is a very simple, open barn-like house with a double height living / dining / kitchen space, two bedrooms, two baths, an office / studio space, and ample storage. At the same time, its modern, open form evokes the urban loft apartment. Within the bar structure of the house there is also a semi-enclosed “courtyard” space that is part of the entry sequence, as well as a covered, outdoor dining room and a buffer between the public and private spaces of the house. The details are very simple, and the materials are evocative of the barns in the area – the weathered vertical wood siding and the terne-coated standing seam metal roof.