Architecture Innovator Winners
Our IDA winners have been announced! Discover who our judges picked for best in Architecture!
Modern Masterpiece A newly overhung roof and a wall of windows lend depth and transparency to this reconsidered 1970s house. While simple, Joeb Moore’s interventions required precision of measurement, shadow and scale, as seen in this overall sketch (below). photograph by timothy schenck; ILLUSTRATioN Courtesy of Joeb Moore + Partners
Hip To Be Square Enormous pavers (top row left and middle) provide a sense of rhythm to an outdoor walkway that sweeps past the barn studio and to the low-slung main house. In the barn studio (bottom middle), a bright red Crate & Barrel rug offers a pop of color against stark white walls. A garage door through Ed’s Garage Doors gives the space an urban loft feel. A clean-lined bathroom bottom left) with verdant views boasts a Wetstyle tub and Porcelanosa tile. Open Plans A walnut-paneled kitchen (top row right) featuring a cut-out window overlooking the landscape, a sleek KWC faucet through Klaff’s and a sweeping Caesarstone breakfast bar delivers both iconic modernism and an invitation to nature. A long living room (bottom row right) opens up to views of the outside and creates a central passageway between the kitchen, family room and the house’s master suite. A Crate & Barrel sectional wraps around a Blu Dot coffee table. photographs by timothy schenck
Winner
A collaborative endeavor updates a mid-century modern for 21st-century family life
Joeb Moore is having a conversation both with and about his award-winning house—a project that, itself, is having a conversation with the landscape—and, at the same time, a conversation with his clients, two designers who were extremely involved in both design and construction. “The core theme of this particular project is collaboration,” he says by way of explaining the multifaceted dialogues going on in this renovation and update of an original 1970s Peter Ogden structure. One dialogue is between architect and clients (typical); one is between architecture and the natural landscape (necessary); one is between building and cultural landscape (unexpected); and one is between the expanded fields of art and architecture (deep). “We don’t see a building as just a physical object,” Moore says. “We see it as deeply embedded in this larger social field.”
The house would seem prepared to buckle under the weight of such interpretation, but the strength of the project is that it can both stand up to and support Moore’s ideological and interpretive investigations. To introduce a more contemporary aesthetic, Moore gave the original roof a three-and-a-half-foot overhang that made it appear to float above a revamped stucco exterior; ripped off the trim; installed 8-by-8-foot glass panels that brought what Moore calls “unbelievably beautiful” light into the interior; added a new office to the programatic layout; and opened that up to the nature preserve the house overlooks. “It was already mid-century modern,” Moore says of the incredible palette he was presented with. “We just abstracted it further.”
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Sound Structure New England architectural touchstones—pitched roofs, an outdoor terrace and gray siding—mask an architectural complexity and specificity suited to the clients’ family makeup and the neighborhood’s disaster history. As a precaution against damage in another storm, Rubens-Duhl built the house on 45-foot-deep piles and elevated it from the ground plane. photographs by neil landino, jr.
Beach Blast A bright and airy kitchen (bottom left) opens into a dining nook lit by a Hubbardton Forge pendant light. Reclaimed wood pine dining table is from Williams-Sonoma. The sides of the butcher-block–topped island are painted Benjamin Moore Greyhound. Dark rafters both support and lend visual punch to the living/dining room (top) that overlooks the Sound. The elevated ceiling and central axis of the windows lends a sense of grandeur mitigated by the comfortable casual furnishings. An outdoor porch (bottom right) with ipe wood decking wraps the house and offers a contiguous connection between architecture and water. photographs by neil landino, jr; OUTDOOR PORCH PHOTO PEGGY RUBENS-DUHL, AIA
Innovator 2
Emerging from the storm, a coastal design works hand-in-hand with Mother Nature
It wasn’t long after Peggy Rubens-Duhl, AIA of Fresh Architect signed a contract with her clients—a brother and sister who wanted to create a New England gathering place for the rest of their family—that Tropical Storm Irene battered the Connecticut shoreline where the home was located. The clients’ original cottage was destroyed to the point that it needed to be demolished, but Rubens-Duhl salvaged as much material—and spirit—of the old place as she could. “We were salvaging memories and parts of the old building while building a new, more modern home,” Rubens-Duhl says. “We were trying to play nicely in the sandbox of Mother Nature.”
Rubens-Duhl focused on both the necessity to build a warm, comforting and inviting house that could function as a central family get-together spot, and the need to create a structure that could withstand the assaults of a tough environment. “It’s such a vulnerable area,” she notes. This led to a complex visual and conceptual interplay between rugged interventions like 45-foot-deep FEMA-compliant structural piles and the detail-oriented delicacy and openness of much of the interior work. Working within new requirements for coastal design was a challenge and required multiple variances and an incredible focus on making sure this cottage nestled by the sea worked. “I have this little joke that I’m Facebook friends with Mother Nature now,” Rubens-Duhl says. Clearly, that friendship has been confirmed.
Want to see more winners from the Innovation in Design Awards? Click on a category below to view each winner:
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High Style A 35-square-foot great room, designed by interior designer Isabelle K. Vanneck, offers a massive dining room table through L’Antiquaire, dining chairs covered in Lee Jofa fabric, chandelier and sconces through Paul Ferrante and massive salvaged wood trusses. photograph by woodruff-brown architectural photography
Rock Steady The house’s exterior (top) combines a Georgian aesthetic with Normandy specificity; different shapes and sizes of stones create a deeply textured and visually engaging exterior palette. Architect Charles Hilton refers to the tower as his “Juliet” bedroom. A fully equipped gourmet kitchen (bottom left) provides a home-away-from-home for the wife, who loves to cook. A carved banister (bottom right) leads from the bedroom area into the lofty great room. Chairs are upholstered in Whistler fabric from Threads at Lee Jofa. INTERIOR PHOTOGRAPHS BY WOODRUFF-BROWN ARCHITECTURAL PHOTOGRAPHY; EXTERIOR PHOTOGRAPH BY NICHOLAS ROTONDI PHOTOGRAPHY
Innovator 3
A Greenwich guesthouse incorporates Old-World comforts and high-tech amenities
For a client that Charles Hilton had been working with for 18 years, Charles Hilton Architects and Douglas VanderHorn Architects (formerly of Hilton-VanderHorn Architects) created a French Normandy-meets-barn party house. Less frat rager and more idealized dinner party (the wife is an enthusiastic cook), the simple structure incorporates a romantic bedroom tower and a 35-square-foot great room complete with hand-hewn trusses that were flown in from a salvage company in the Carolinas and a multitiered wrought-iron chandelier. The guesthouse supplements the owners’ existing estate, an aesthetic that Hilton wanted to reference without copying, add on to without overshadowing.
“All of the materials are kind of Old World, from the hand-hewn timber inside and out, and handmade brick on the outside to the French plaster on the inside,” Hilton explains. Limestone from France introduced a rugged texture into the project, and the multiple types of cladding on the exterior—local native granite for the base, antique oak and chestnut beams, and Roman bricks—add a level of visual detail and a tactile flourish that blends seamlessly into the variegated countryside. Hilton wanted the style of this new project to provide a casual yet textured counterpoint to the property’s existing Georgian structures.
Want to see more winners from the Innovation in Design Awards? Click on a category below to view each winner:
bath
landscape
kitchen
interior design
