Form + Function | J. Michael Welton | News Concerning the Built Environment

News Concerning the Built Environment

By J. Michael Welton

If people tell you there's nothing happening in Triangle architecture these days, just grab your T-square and straighten ’em out. There is lots going on with firms, projects, awards and very good design. Examples:
John Reese, now with Duda/Paine Architects, held an open house recently for his new residential design on Banbury Road off Wade Avenue in Raleigh. Reese worked with talented and easy-going Will Alphin of Alphin Design Build to make the home a reality, along with Clearscapes and Lysaght & Associates, Engineers. The 2500-square-foot home features two master suites for a family of two, sans children. It’s rigorously minimal in its use of materials for the great room, kitchen, music room, and open-air exterior for courtyard, lap-pool and carport. See it at: www.trianglemodernisthouses.com/reese.htm.
Ellen Cassilly Architect, whose Durham residence and Parisian-style celebration of the arts known as Cassilhaus, recently featured in a full-page story in The New York Times, is marking her first decade of architecture in the Triangle this year. Go to: www.ellencassillyarchitect.com.
NC State School of Design grad Chad Everhart, teaching at Appalachian State and practicing his own selective brand of design, has his uber-cool country home featured at www.dwell.com. His “Farmhouse Redux” is built on the foundation of a 1930s home near Boone, NC. Everhart dismantled the old structure, saving its vintage chestnut, hemlock and pine. He then incorporated them all into his new 950-square-foot home. You can see it at: www.dwell.com/articles/farmhouse-redux.html.

Brian Shawcroft’s respectful addition to the 1950 James Fitzgibbon-designed Fadum House on Granville Drive in Raleigh has won two awards: one from Raleigh’s Capital Area Preservation and another from the City of Raleigh’s 2009 Sir Walter Raleigh Awards for Community Appearance. George Smart Jr., champion of the Triangle’s legacy of modernist architecture, also won an individual 2009 Sir Walter Raleigh Award.
Frank Harmon has unveiled two new projects that look to the land for inspiration. The first is a 7000-square-foot Environmental Education Center at the Walnut Creek Urban Wetlands Educational Park south of Raleigh, housing a bookshop, conference room, library, kitchen, classrooms and laboratory. The structure treads lightly — poised six feet above the wetlands flood plain — with a minimal footprint. It boasts the longest back porch in North Carolina, ushering visitors to lush and verdant Carolina flora outside. It was designed with Robin C. Moore and Nilda Cosco of The Natural Learning Initiative, landscape architect Cynthia Rice, and civil engineers McKim & Creed. See: http://blog.frankharmon.com/press-releases.
Harmon also designed the new Visitor’s Education Center at North Carolina Botanical Garden in Chapel Hill with Erin Sterling and Matthew Griffith. It’s a family of eco-friendly buildings, using solar energy for heating, lighting and hot water, featuring open breezeways, beaucoups porches and natural light for every room. Find it at: www.ncbg .unc.edu/pages/4.
Vernacular Studio’s very spare 101 Lounge + Cafe keeps piling on the design awards, taking a 2009 North Carolina AIA Merit Award and a 2009 Inform Magazine Merit Award from the Virginia AIA, after winning a 2008 AIA Triangle Merit. See it at: www.vstudio3.com/architecture/hospitality/101-lounge-cafe.
Finally, what’s up with the resurrection of the 1954 Eduardo Catalano house? Rumors once rampant about what some call the coolest house ever — the one destroyed here in 2001 — have slipped into a black hole. First it was to be rebuilt on museum grounds, then reborn as a touchstone at a new modernist community. Neither happened. Now, some say NC State holds the keys to its future, if it has one. See the original house, the one Carolina icon that’s hugely worth bringing back, at: www.jetsetmodern.com/catalano.htm.