There she found a remodeled and redesigned foundry that still produces smalti, or enameled glass, the same way it did a century ago. But Lucio Orsoni was now opening up his family’s generations-old home, process and materials to students of mosaic from around the world. He offered a studio for weeklong classes, five bedrooms for a B &B, a salon and breakfast area, a first-floor gallery and conference area, and a key to the front door.

Besides the freedom to come and go as she pleased, Julie had 24-hour access to the studio and a fantastic, color-infused array of materials with which to work.

“They make the glass out of silicon sand, minerals and pigments right there in the foundry,” she said. “Every mineral fires differently. The kilns are always firing and the conveyer belt is 300 feet long. It gives off a pure color that’s very rare. And then you have the entire Orsoni palette, including all the gold you want, at your fingertips.”

Working alongside a group of friends as well as mothers, housewives and soccer moms taking a week off to feed their artistic development, she became enamored of the entire Orsoni state of grace.

She returned in October last year, to win the much-coveted 2009 Orsoni Award for Mosaic.

“It’s a wall relief – a shirt that’s 32 inches tall, 21 inches wide and 2 and a half inches deep,” she said. “It looks like a man’s nightgown or a draped shirt. It won for the use of materials in a unique way to create the mosaic.”

Indeed. The shirt’s motif was modeled after one of her husband’s cast-offs and inspired by her vision of the San Francisco skyline years ago, when Lucio Orsoni came to speak at a mosaic conference. “It’s San Francisco at night,” she said. “I carried it around in my head for years.”

Its form is a panel of Styrofoam, skim-coated with Thinset and fiberglass mesh, with aluminum mesh for the collar, all gauzed over with Plaster of Paris. “I laid the glass in on top of that, packing in the pieces next to each other,” she said. “When all that dries, you have a concrete form but a lightweight exterior.”

It’s neither the largest or smallest work for the artist who’s been practicing with glass, stone and marble in kitchens, baths and fireplaces for 20 years. Her smallest is a 2-inch by 2-inch micro-mosaic of the Venice skyline, and her largest is in the Dallas/Fort Worth airport’s Terminal D, where she recently installed a 320-square-foot floor mosaic in Italian glass called “Opus Romano.”

But it’s the courses at Domus Orsoni that are calling her name most often these days. “There’s a three-day class, a two week portraiture class, and a micro-mosaic class where you pull your own glass - you melt it yourself with a blowtorch, and pull it out in threads with a pair of pliers,” she said. “Then you embed them vertically.”

“I’m going to bring a group back,” she said.

For more on Julie Richey, go to http://web.mac.com/julierichey/www.juliericheymosaics.com/Welcome.html

For more on Domus Orsoni, go to http://www.orsoni.com

After Theodore’s death in 1998, a volunteer group banded together to purchase and save his work from development, and to restore his personally crafted designs and buildings on the 43-acre site. Among these are eccentricities like a miniature stone castle and a double-rowed, pleached holly allee.

After the purchase, Yew Dell was almost immediately honored as one of 13 gardens among the Garden Conservancy, a national group dedicated to saving the nation’s most unique gardens. In 2002, the organization authored the gardens’ stabilization plan to help its board of directors manage it rehabilitation.

The board contacted DeLeon & Primmer Architecture Workshop, now based in Louisville. Roberto Leon and Ross Primmer, both from Harvard’s Graduate School of Design, had set up their practice in that mid-tier city in 2002. They were looking for a community that, like their firm, was poised for growth.

The board was interested in establishing a learning center for lectures and classes in its bank barn — a structure built into a hillside on site decades ago. It’s a two-story, 40-foot by 60-foot affair, with an entry on its high side. It’s historical, but from recent history – it was ordered from Sears back in the ‘40s.

“It’s got a lot of nuances – the curved roof trusses have his name stamped on them,” Roberto said. “He built it with all these openings and bird houses in it. We were able to save a number of them and put them back.”

To complement and expand the existing structure, the architects suggested adding a pavilion alongside the bank barn. “We wanted to build something of architectural significance,’” Roberto said. “It was not about the cost, but about getting the most out of the budget.”

The architects mimicked local tobacco barns, with black pitch skin outside and natural pine walls inside. The complex now contains restrooms, lecture space, room for potting classes and a catering kitchen. One of its unintended uses is as a wedding venue that’s booked for entire summers at a time.

“We showed that by preserving the bank barn and adding the pavilion for the same low cost that we could make the facility more integrated,” he said. “The pavilion is almost the same square footage, with an outdoor space that overlooks the bank barn.”

For more on DeLeon & Primmer Architecture, go to http://www.deleon-primmer.com/

For more on Yew Dell Gardens, go to http://www.yewdellgardens.org/

“The Grove in St. Louis was an area in the 1970s and ‘80s that was in a bit of a free fall,” said Tom Niemeier, partner in Space Architects. “”It’s been on the rebound over the past five or six years. We’re right on the main strip on Manchester Road, where the urban fabric of the main boulevard is still intact.”

Their 7,500 square-foot brick building was falling in on itself when the 15-member firm acquired it almost two years ago. “There was a corner cracked off that we had to re-pier and build the brick back up,” he said. “But we saw that we could fix it up and be a significant player in the neighborhood. Now it’s the nicest building on the block”

It’s also the most energy efficient. With a very tight envelope of super-insulated walls, new windows and a white rubber single membrane roof to reflect the sun, the building has increased its energy efficiency by 51 percent, according to the local power company.

But its heating and cooling system is what draws the most attention from visitors and clients. Working with a firm called Arctic Solar, Niemeier and company designed a geothermal system that relies on 15 wells drilled 200 feet deep below its parking lot. Thirteen solar thermal panels on the roof heat water to 300 – 400 degrees, even on a cloudy day. The water moves through pipes to tanks below ground, where it’s cooled off a bit, then circulated through a radiant concrete floor to heat the building.

“It warms to 54 degrees – the ground temperature – then mixes with the water from the roof at 300 – 400 degrees,” Tom said. “The solar water heats it to about 80 degrees.”

More interesting is the building’s cooling system. It uses no ductwork or forced air, but relies on a series of ten-foot copper pipes encased in eight-inch-wide aluminum fins. Water from the ground wells, cooled down to 45 degrees through a heat pump, is pumped through the pipes. As it warms up, it’s sent back into the ground to be cooled again.

“It’s like cold radiators hanging from the ceiling,” he said.

The approximate $700,000 cost of renovating the building has been offset, shrewdly, by employing a battery of tax credits. “The biggest challenge for the building was financial, no doubt,” he said. “Our workload and our cash flow was dropping, and we were ramping up and spending more.”

But the firm realized about $687,000 in local financial aid, in a rebate from the federal government for its heating and cooling system, another rebate from the local power company, along with substantial local, state and federal historic tax credits.

All that’s enabled the firm to maintain its presence – and staff.

“Other firms have slashed staff, but we have not,” Tom said. “Plus, there’s a lot of good will built up in the community – we were on the front page of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch – that will be helpful when the economy comes back.”

For more on Space Architects, go to http://www.space-stl.com/

It took two years.

“I wanted to design homes with better values, with better health and with environmental responsibility,” he said. “I wanted to inspire change, to respond to the economic crisis and provide homebuyers and the general public with options for a more responsible lifestyle.”

His solution is called GreenFab LLC. It’s about modular homes that meet the same code as site-built, their modules carefully produced in a factory, then shipped to a site and assembled by crane and a team of specialists.

The company offers a basic, LEED-Gold, 1,635-square foot home with a price range between $125 and $150 per square foot. With upgrades and special packages, that figure can go as high as $250 to $300.

It achieves its LEED status with an extremely tight envelope achieved with R-26 insulation in its walls, rigid insulation outside, double glazed windows, and a hybrid heat pump/water heater. The home is all-electric, with usage about 50 percent of a comparable home.

And there are options.

“From the basic model, we can offer upgrades to increase the LEED rating or the air quality for those with respiratory issues,” he said. “There’s also the rainwater package that adds a cistern, the green roof package that adds a living roof and the green tech package that adds a monitoring system to measure energy and water use.”

There’s also the net zero package that adds more photovoltaic cells than the 2.5 kilowatts on the basic home and bumps up the windows’ UV and the “R” value in the already tightly insulated walls.

The basic home, with two bedrooms and two baths, also offers a garage and the option of a mother-in-law suite. “That increases the density, which is one of the city of Seattle’s primary goals,” he said.

GreenFab’s first built home is under construction now on a 30-foot by 100-foot urban infill lot in Seattle. It features a modern design aesthetic with its flat roof for a deck with city views. “We’re filling a hole in the marketplace,” he said. “This is the first modular, LEED-certified home in Seattle.”

Future models will be as small as 800 to 1,200 square feet and as large as 2,200 to 2,400 square feet. “Our philosophy, though, is not to build large houses,” Johnny said. “Smaller is better.”

For more on GreenFab, go to http://green-fab.com/contact.html

“It’s not a medical facility,” he said. “It’s a place where people go to learn – a place of hope. It’s designed for teaching and helping patients and their families cope.”

Before he could begin even to think about design, the architect conducted a half-dozen eco-charrettes to review goals, functions, users and systems. He wanted the resolution for the project to be a comprehensive whole that’s ultra-sensitive to the needs of its users..

“The design came out of all of that,” he said. “We had to consider it all at once – it was an integrated design for a homelike setting where anyone affected by a diagnosis can come in without restrictions, meet with their doctor, learn and be counseled.”

The 12,000 square foot facility – actually a pair of 6,000 square foot structures linked by a “bridge of hope” is located on a site in Lakewood Ranch overlooking a nature preserve of Florida wetlands set aside by the developer.

Its walls are composed of insulated forms – oversized Styrofoam blocks filled with concrete – with a stone base and stucco outside. Inside are counseling rooms for adult and children’s therapy, a doctors’ area, a clubhouse lounge and a community center that will be open to the public.

The large arch bonding the two buildings is supported by eight 150-year old pine logs harvested from the Suwannee River in Florida. The tree trunks are 30 feet tall and 18 inches wide. The roof of the arch, constructed of laminate and tongue and groove decking, is sheathed in standing seam metal.

“It’s function is to shield the coffee shop, lounge, and courtyard between the two buildings,” Michael said. “It’s open at both ends of the courtyard, and from inside of both buildings, you can still see the arch above you.”

The arch reaches 35 feet in the air, is 156 feet long, with a span between the two buildings of 40 feet. “It has such an impact when you turn the corner,” he said. “You know where you’re headed – it’s a landmark and an orientation.”

That’s a deliberate effect designed by the firm that’s been working on the project passionately for the past four years. “The concept is that it’s all set up to help change people’s lives,” he said. “It’s like a rainbow – an eternal symbol of hope, and a bridge from diagnosis to recovery.”

The sustainable, LEED Gold-designed complex is due to open in November.

They’re doing it with lightweight fiberglass and tempered glass photovoltaic sheets they sell and install by the square foot – with a look that’s remarkably slate-like.

“We shape our product to the structure, rather than forcing the structure to adapt to us,” Bob said. “We’re taking all the metal out, and so we can give architects a free hand with circles, squares and rectangles.”

The company is currently working on projects as small as a 12-foot by 12 foot cabin, and as large as a 7,000 square foot, south-facing roof for an orthopedic clinic in Richmond. That one will return electricity to the grid. “The power goes back to Dominion Power during the day, and you get the credit,” he said. “At night, you bring it back and use up some of those credits.”

The company is driving costs out of photovoltaics by using factories to assemble products rather than depending on assembly and installation in the field. “It takes a lot of the labor out, and you don’t have down time from workers up on the roof, slowed down by rain and snow and wind,” he said. “We can test it in the factory and work out quality control while we put the sheets together.”

In the factory, panels 16 inches by 12 inches can be assembled into sheets 20 feet by 10 feet (depending on transportation methods, they can be as large as 53 feet by 11 feet), and moved to the construction site. An anchor sheathing is laid over roof trusses, and the photovoltaics are laid over that. Electrical wiring can be connected prior to, during or after installation.

One of the firm’s target markets is the inventory of slate roofs 75 years of age or older, particularly for historic districts. “It looks like a slate roof when we’re done,” he said. “You can replace your roof for the same price as slate, but with this product, you can generate electricity for the whole time the roof’s on your house.”

For more on U.S. Green Energy Corporation, go to: http://www.usgreenenergycorporation.com/

By night it’ll be a transparent lantern inviting all that pass on foot or wheels to bask in its glow and celebrate the wealth of history that’s stored in Old Louisville.

With its new three-story expansion, the Filson Historical Society, founded in 1884 as the Filson Club in that river city, is undergoing a metamorphosis. The 3,000-member group is striving to become more open and accessible to the public. And a talented local architecture firm has been charged with writing the new chapter.

“It’s a little jewel box filled with all these treasures,” said Louisville’s De Leon & Primmer’s Roberto De Leon of his firm’s new design for the transparent facility at West Ormsby Avenue and South Fourth Street. “At night it’s compelling, glowing element. During the day it’s like an onion skin with its roman brick veneer, dark brown anodized aluminum roof and thin wood-lined scrim inside.”

It’s to be sited next to the Ferguson Mansion, to which the Club moved in 1986. That Beaux-Arts structure, built of limestone and brick between 1901 and 1905, was the product of an ambitious real estate expansion south of Louisville’s Central Park after the Southern Exposition, an annual event that took place from 1883-87. The Ferguson Mansion anchors the Filson campus at South Third Street.

The architects did their homework in researching not just the campus, but the surrounding community. “We cataloged every building in a nine-block zone,” Roberto said. “We discovered some patterns that emerged. We realized that it was important to maintain the contiguity of the density of the original mansions there. If we hadn’t sited it where it’s going to be, there would have been a missing tooth where the building is.”

The firm’s design, too, respects its surroundings. “It’s the same proportions as all the others on the block,” he said. “It’s a one-third to two-third proportion, with a 45-foot height. Three thirds forms a perfect square.”

Inside, one function will be as a lecture hall, which will double as a spacious resource for community events. It will also double the archival space for manuscripts and artifacts, with a porous racking system similar to that found in the Morgan Library and Museum in New York. Its winding staircase is a riff on the elaborate affairs found inside its ornate cousins built nearby in the late 19th and early 20th century.

All features inside will be very visible on the broad expanse of its north elevation facing Ormsby Avenue. “We’re turning the Filson building inside out, to reveal what it will do for the community,” Roberto said. “And even though it has some very civic qualities scaled to a campus mall, the spaces are still at a very residential scale.”

She doesn’t like precious – she doesn’t understand it. She’s not an antique dealer, though she loves and sells the occasional piece. She simply believes, like Hemingway, that what she leaves out is just as important as what she leaves in.

And she’s very successful, counting Vera Wang, Tory Burch and Michael J. Fox among her clients.

She purchased eight-year-old Lucca & Co. three years ago, then established its new identity on 61st Street in Manhattan. She hasn’t looked back since.

“The Lucca brand is one that’s tailored, chic, modern and timeless,” she said. “The living room in my own home is two sofas and tables. That’s all. There’s light, airiness, comfort and lifestyle.”

Inside her showroom, she combines a Zen-like love for simple, Scandinavian-influenced pieces with a keen appreciation for works from Uruguay, Sicily, Korea and Europe. She’s divided the space up into living areas, setting it up for clients to experience how an apartment might feel. There, she combines the contemporary with the antique.

“I know how to put a room together,” she said. “”I understand scale, proportion and adding layers for the long term.”

She knows the strength of restraint as well, as demonstrated in her Lucca stone top dining table from Belgium. A simple elliptical slab of thin stone laid out upon a cube of blackened steel, it’s a tutorial in geometric minimalism. It’s offered in Belgian bluestone, Piasentina stone and Lasa White Marble.

Then there’s the pair of white, porcelain, Belgian tabletop lamps. “They fit into our brand material – they’re smart, they’re natural, they’re pure, they’re functional, they’re magical and they stand alone as sculptures.”

At the moment, she’s enamored of her modernist pillar candles. Cubed or rectangular in shape, they come in varying heights. Their form and texture are derived from a simple architecture, like most of the pieces in her showroom.

“I live design,” Lisa Jackson said. “I love design, and I love a comfortable lifestyle. I put it out there every day for everything.”

For more on Lucca & Co., go to http://www.luccany.com/

Instead, they wanted to install an elevator. And a kitchen. And to age in place instead of moving away.

Their team of architects, headed by Mark McInturff, concluded that the only place an elevator could be placed to serve all five levels (one below grade, four above) would be as a tower on the exterior of the house.

Windows in the facade of the elevator shaft allow light in and views out. The steel frame of the tower also supports a new breakfast room for a renovated kitchen.

“It was an ‘80s stucco, kind of a generic modern.,” Mark said. “We decided to make it fun with the copper tower.”

The team added decks onto the roof of the bedroom as well as over the roof of the garage.

Then they labeled it, appropriately enough, the Elevator House.

For more on McInturff Architects, go to http://www.mcinturffarchitects.com/

“I don’t think Solomon Cordwell Buenz (SCB) has done an all-glass building since the firm did Harbor Point and Edgewater in the early 1970s,” John said. “This one is a curtain wall with very little articulation on it. We felt it was a very simple, clean and appropriate response.”

SCB was founded in 1931, and since the 1950s has been a major contributor to Chicago’s soaring collection of ambitious skyscrapers. The Legacy at Millennium Park, though, provided an unusual set of challenges, beginning with a wedge-shaped site at Wabash Avenue and Monroe Street.

“The site’s on a corner,” John said. “We had to incorporate an existing structure – the Champlain Building that the Art Institute of Chicago owns – into it. And then the city deemed that the façade on Wabash had to stay – it’s a series of narrow, vacant buildings.”

His solution was to work from the inside out – to leave the facades, but construct the building behind them. “It’s a very small footprint,” he said. We couldn’t get to it from the outside, and the facades made access very difficult.”

The result is a building whose inspiration was derived from the techniques used to address the difficulties of its site. “It was the result of that problem-solving process,” he said. “There were a lot of pragmatic factors. We had to form the mass first, and then articulate the exterior – the simpler, the better.”

With condominiums above, the Legacy is about as mixed use as possible below. Retail shops populate the ground level while a sky bridge connects the development to the University Club of Chicago, and seven parking level for residents.

The modern tower seamlessly integrates into the restored Jewelers Row Historic District storefronts at street level, then nods respectfully with its restored terracotta façade entrance.

Views from the tower two- and three-bedroom condos overlook Lake Michigan and Millennium Park, with work by both Frank Gehry and Renzo Piano in view. One-bedroom condos overlook the Chicago skyline.

The architect added a pair of two-story common “getaway” areas, with decks, atop the north and south ends. At 1,500 square feet, they’re available to all tenants, and offer views of the park, the lake and the city.

The condos are nearly complete and already 90 percent sold.

For more on the Legacy at Millennium Park, go to http://www.thelegacyatmillenniumpark.com/home.asp

For more on Solomon Cordwell Buenz, go to http://www.scb.com/