Architects and Artisans

The Wine Country Residence in Paso Robles, Calif., halfway between Los Angeles and San Francisco, is a fluid tutorial in how to relate inside to out. “We used the curved spine of the house as a unifying element,” said Steven Dewan of Bassenian Lagoni Architecture and Land Planning. The spine is a means of circulating [...]

If any town in America breathes the rarified air of architecture today, it’s New Canaan, Conn. It’s close to midtown and Cambridge. Homes there sell for an average of $2.7 million. And in the 1940s and ‘50s, it was a fertile hotbed for the modernist experiments of Phillip Johnson, Marcel Breuer, Landis Gores, John M. [...]

Frankly, Ambergris Cay in the Turks and Caicos is not for everyone. But for those who can afford it, it’s an unforgettable experience. The 1,100-acre private island is three miles long and one mile wide, with eight miles of beaches and shoreline. There’s whale watching at a man-made cove at one end, and world class [...]

Two and a half minutes from Woody Creek Tavern, where an outrageous Dr. Hunter Stockton Thompson once held court and passed judgment upon all who dared trespass there, lies a well-sited new house with grand views of the Roaring Fork and the town of Aspen. It’s much quieter now. The good doctor is gone. And [...]

For a house with a long, thin footprint, this one on Martha’s Vineyard packs a real kick. It’s done in the shingle style, and more than a little reminiscent of H.H. Richardson’s 19th century work – a taut skin stretched over volume and mass, then carefully punctured with graceful openings for windows and doors. “It’s [...]

Joel Lassiter took up photography as a profession 17 years ago. He’d been a fine arts major at UNC Charlotte, with an eye for architecture. When he graduated, he managed to merge the two interests into a career – and shoot some fairly fabulous buildings along the way. He likes to think of his work [...]

Where army officers once imbibed feely at a private club on their base near Monterey, Calif., dyslexic K-8 students now celebrate the use of water at a reborn Chartwell School. “They tend to learn in a more experiential way, rather than in a rote manner,” said Bry Sarte, principal at Sherwood Design Engineers of San [...]

In the spring of 2010, Chris Colby of Spire Architects & Design in Millbrook, N.Y. will break ground on a traditional Cape-style home. It’s made of concrete, and it’s net-zero energy. “Our earlier net-zero designs were more contemporary,” he said.  “But people here said they didn’t want them so modern-looking.” This one will be an infill [...]

Mike Rantilla looked for three years to find the right site for the home he wanted to design for himself in suburban Raleigh. “There were restrictions and hindrances to a modern building,” he said. “I probably looked at 50 lots, and got close on five of them. But then I would have had to do [...]

Soon, on a site in downtown Raleigh that architect Frank Harmon puckishly likens to the shape of a pork chop, the North Carolina chapter of the AIA will break ground for a slim new Center for Architecture and Design. “It’s on less than an acre, and we placed it parallel to Peace Street,” Harmon said. [...]