Fuller Overby

Nebo House

2022

AIA Virginia 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 Interni, 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

Irina. Private Chambers

2026

Interior Design NYCXDESIGN Kitchen + Bath Category Award Winner

Featured in Dwell

Irina is a Primary Bed & Bath Suite that uses the existing restraints of a petite footprint and a challenging ceiling to create an intimate and airy space for bathing and rest. When the client, an artist, purchased the Village of Southampton property, she elected to convert the home’s original ground floor suite into a painting studio which opened onto the garden. She selected a humble garret space, with much of the ceiling under head height, to serve as her private quarters.

To belie the modest footprint, the design emphasizes continuity and depth of space through materiality, openness, and the novel use of the lower heights under the roof. The perimeters under these portions of the slope are tailored to the body in reclination, such as slumber and bathing, and to custom millwork specific to the height and use. This careful calibration increases the usable floor area by a third. The showering side of tub has a generous ceiling; the bathing end requires only four feet, as does the position of a body sitting upright in bed. The wall bound five foot tall dressing room cabinetry has an airiness and visual transparency to offer ease of use, with lightweight rattan paneling interspersed among open shelves and sliding trays.  

These perimeters are unfurling ribbons, forming curvatures marked by changes in finish related to function. The soft fabric headboard unwraps in the bath as a tadelakt tub pocket, the wooden and woven millwork becomes a simple matte sitting niche. The spaces slide into each other atop a poured warm white floor, all rotating around a freestanding sink volume. More private areas are screened by operable panels rather than closed off, allowing each space to visually expand into the others. The Bath functions are separated into three adjacent components: a rectilinear toilet cabine, an ovoid tub niche, and a rounded vanity core that is partially wrapped by a full-height wall. One side of the vanity opens onto a linear dressing area and bath storage, offering ease of clothing and readying oneself for the day or in preparation for the evening.  Headboard and closet walls gently arc around the vanity core to shield the Bath zone from the sleeping area and allow continuous circulation between all functions. Sitting in the tub, the rear garden is visible through a dramatically enlarged full-height window, while being bathed in the light from skylight above. The adjacent arced wall, which hides a curved hinged panel, conceals the bather from view of the bed.

Subtle textures and the soft color palette evoke a tactility and intimacy bespoke to private chambers. Finishes are responsive to function, as well as to the light and the views of the garden – the same elements found within the client’s artwork. Smooth pink tadelakt alternates with satin plaster around bath areas, the water closet is encased with green bamboo wall covering. The movement and gentle shimmer of the aqua moiré headboard compliments the adjacent wet spaces. Carefully placed mirrored surfaces enhance a depth of the space, bouncing light and reflection with whimsy. A quartz flecked eco-resin floor unifies all elements in a seamless milky pool. The varied colors and textures of the total composition register the shifting quality of light as it changes throughout the day.

Wetlands House

2026

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.

Houselet

2025

AIA Virginia Small Projects Award 2025

Featured in R Home Magazine

A ground up extension to a classic Cape Cod house in Richmond, VA. This age in place addition offers a bedroom suite to the ground floor; the space can transition to an Accessory Dwelling Unit or in-home office for future homeowners.

The addition is set the rear yard, peeking out from behind the main house. The offset allows for windows in all cardinal directions, creates alignments with the internal circulation of the suite and house, and minimizes the intrusion upon the lot’s green space. The primary volume 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.

Glazed openings vary in accordance to the programmatic moment and emphasize the exterior tectonic. The mildly sloped roof is buttressed on the three free facades with dimensional pop-outs. These multifunctional structural pockets absorb the forces of the roof and create storage niches. The open vaulted interior frames views of the garden and allows light to travel uninterrupted through the bedroom, bath, and dressing room.

Photography:  Paul Warchol
GC:  Pat Madden, Peregrine Builders

Structural Engineer:   Nat Oppenheimer, Silman/Tylin

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

Diversions

ongoing

Featured in the Smithsonian Craft Show, New Artists 2022, Washington, DC & the Visual Arts Center Craft & Design Show, October 2022, Richmond, VA, The Architect’s Newspaper, 2026

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.