Nebo House

2022

AIA Merit Award Residential Design 2023

Featured in Architectural Record Record Houses 2023, Inform, Dezeen & Design Milk

The site for the Nebo House is a long, narrow plot in the Appalachian foothills that slopes downward to Lake James. The main floor is embedded into the hillside, like a hunter’s blind, with a central courtyard splitting the primary program into two wings.

To the East of the courtyard are social areas and to the West is a private sleeping and bathing suite—Day and Night. A hall which acts as a mechanical and structural spine along the rear retaining wall connects the private and public spaces. The larger, public zones of the interior radiate outward from the courtyard and gradually break up into more intimate niches around the periphery that provide semi-private moments within the open living areas.

Views are focused outward to the lake, while southern light filters in from clerestory windows above. A sculpted cantilever staircase slices upward to the entry and guest rooms, forming a continuous three dimensional void capped by a skylight at its peak. Above grade, the house appears as a cluster of small pavilions along the hillside, framing the lake and mountains beyond.

Photography:  Paul Warchol
Structural Engineer:   Nat Oppenheimer, Silman
Mechanical Engineer:  Mark Cambria, Fusion Systems

Ackerman Farmhouse

2023

NYCxDesign Interior Design Magazine Honoree 2024

Featured in The Wall Street Journal, The Wall Street Journal (Print), Dwell

The farmhouse, a 1700’s homestead for the Dutch Ackerman family, sits aside the Hackensack River on terrain largely untouched from the rolling NJ countryside of the 18^th century. The interior of the house, particularly the upper floors, were a different matter.  The past two and a half centuries were marked by awkward subdivisions and hasty finishes. The consequence was an excess of small, poorly lit rooms, with most of the original features partially or fully obscured by partitions and paint.

This historic building, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places (the drawings and photographs are archived in the Library of Congress), ached for a reveal of its structural beauty. The folds of a gambrel roof, supported by a framework of hand hewn timbers, rest upon two foot thick exterior walls made of New Jersey sandstone, the same stone used to build New York City’s iconic brownstones. Sporadic small openings, sized from the practical concerns of 18th century life, are scattered throughout.  The renovation stripped away the muddled infill of walls and dropped ceilings to unearth the largely hidden wooden structure and angled roof form. The second floor is an open plan with a central core encircled by a ring of spaces wrapped around the newly exposed timber elements. These various areas can be opened or closed with oversized sliding panels for particular degrees of privacy in accord with the client’s desire for a flexible design. The main living space of the second floor lays to the south, receiving natural light throughout the day. The primary bedroom, bath, and dressing room are an atmospheric sequence to the north, interconnected by four foot sliding panels. In the bedroom white millwork seeps into the sleeping space from the stair hall through pivoting double doors, hand applied tadelakt coat the wet area walls, and the dressing is wrapped on all sides with waxed wood cabinetry and paneling.

The third floor was partially removed to flood the second floor living space with natural light. Floating amid the timber structure is a sculptural steel staircase which ascends to a guest suite nestled within the uppermost roof. The sharp central pitch was smoothed into a soft curve to allow for an uninterrupted wash of light across the ceiling. Throughout, millwork elements make harmonious the eccentric angles and irregularities of the old house. Concealed within these new elements is a high-performance heat pump conditioning system, LED lighting and storage. A restored wide plank oak floor, formerly hidden under layers of wall to wall carpeting, glows throughout the day. 

The ground floor features a large living room within the original 1734 house which was added onto in 1787 to complete the full building envelope. This space, formerly the locus of 18^th century domestic activity and efficient for the functioning farm, proved to be an impediment in a contemporary time. Minute openings, a low ceiling, and lack of sufficient electrical wiring meant the room sat in darkness day to night. Consequently the house sat on the market for over a year prior to its purchase by the current clients. With the approval of the local Commission of Architecural Review the space is now animated with a steel framed glazing system in the south wall opening onto the Hackensack River. Daylight and the landscape flood the interior, bringing new life to the house.

Photography:  Paul Warchol
GC:  Alex Chay, AAA General Contracting

Structural Engineer, Historic Structure:   Joe DiPompeo, Structural Workshop
Structural Engineer, Steel Stair:   Nat Oppenheimer, Silman
Mechanical Engineer:  Mark Cambria, Fusion Systems

Soho Loft

2021

Featured in Interni Magazine, “L’Equilibrio Armonico” July/August 2022 & ArchDaily

Three kinds of spaces are woven together within a classic Soho cast iron building – a working studio, a gallery, and a living space. The client, a painter, commissioned a gut renovation of neglected loft directly above the Dia Earth Room, located in one of the original Fluxhouse cooperatives which generated the 1970’s transformation of Soho.

In this renovation a millwork Pangaea is inserted into the 19^th century structural framework, unfolding from a centralized coffered space into program specific areas of the project which are tailored to site conditions and pragmatic requirements. The studio embraces the windowed façade, the domestic areas are a thickened permeable perimeter, and the linear entry gallery frames views both close and beyond with various degrees of privacy. The spaces oscillate between openness and moments of enclosure, layered through the definition of cabinetry volumes, operable planes, and wrapped existing structural elements.

This project commenced in the studio of Diane Lewis where Emma Fuller was an Associate. Upon the death of Diane, Fuller/Overby continued the design work and oversaw construction. This project is a testament to personal, intellectual and professional kinship.

Diane Lewis & Fuller/Overby
Photography:  Paul Warchol
Contractor:   Rosario D’Armetta, Sicula Renovations

Southampton Studio

2023

A painter’s studio, archive & small gallery within a classic Long Island residence. Domestic portions of the house around the main courtyard were renovated into an artistic program with a subterranean storage suite below.

Photography:  Paul Warchol

Garden Pavilion

Completion of Construction October 2024

An addition to a classic Cape Cod house in Richmond, VA. The primary bedroom suite is resituated to the ground floor within the garden. This is grafted onto the original structure via an enclosed light filled passage which provides a secondary entrance and direct circulation to the deck for entertaining.

Wetlands House

Construction Fall 2024 – 2025

A new construction house set within the wetlands of rural New Jersey. Two 60′ long sawtooth volumes face the northern light. A creek to the southern edge of the site delineates the adjacent state park and natural preserve. A herpetologist has been retained for the project.

Richmond Studio

2024

Adaptive re-use of an existing accessory building in a historically designated district of Richmond, Virginia. Construction scheduled for 2025-26, additional photos & information forthcoming.

Diversions

ongoing

Featured in the Smithsonian Craft Show, New Artists 2022, Washington, DC & the Visual Arts Center Craft & Design Show, October 2022, Richmond, VA

Diversions is a furniture series that uses discarded bentwood café chairs as raw material for new compositions. The Thonet chair design was a progenitor of the modern movement, the first to wed 19th century industrial fabrication with localized labor. Starting in the 1860’s, light-weight factory formed wood components were flat-packed, shipped around the world, and assembled upon arrival. Akin to Ikea, this occurred at massive scale and enjoyed great popularity.

These chairs can now be found in various states from debilitating decay to careful preservation. We rescue the castaways headed to landfills and begin disassembly, returning the chairs to their original state of parts. These parts are then chopped, spliced, and jointed together to form new tableaus. Our curvatures create light fixtures, tables, planters, wall hangers. Each component of the chair is considered in both design and ecology; metal leg brackets become wall affixing hardware and caning comes from a local repair shop that offers us the leftover cords.

The new pieces explore different methods of construction: side pegged, pierced, friction jointed; all with unique consequence. The configurations are not drawn or composed beforehand, but rather worked in the moment. We approach them as tectonic sketches, freely assembling predetermined parts to arrive at unanticipated forms.