Hampton Avery Architects

Rooftop garden… got plants?

The Coleman garage is complete with the installation of the rooftop garden this weekend.

Now it’s up to Mother Nature to fill in the blanks and help this garden grow.

Hampton Avery Studio 309

For the first half of 2010, Hampton Avery Architects will be working with a talented team to propose realistic and compelling design solutions for urban challenges at three interlocking scales: block / building, neighborhood, and region.

The work of Hampton Avery Studio 309 will culminate in a public exhibition in Chicago’s Bridgeport neighborhood.

Stay tuned!

Coleman garage nearly complete

Trellises, repurposed from galvanized aluminum security grilles from the ReBuilding Exchange, slip from the rooftop garden, over the coping, and down over the wood rainscreen cladding to make it easier for Santa to get to the chimney (not in contract).

The trellises will later form what we like to call around here the ‘green combover’ of trailing plants from the rooftop garden.

See construction photos.

Jury duty in Indiana

From left to right: guest jurors John "Jack" Munson, Dave Hampton, Richard Avery, John Isch.

Richard and Dave were pleased to serve as guest jurors for Prof. Dan Woodfin’s Architecture 201 semester review at Ball State University’s College of Architecture and Planning - Richard’s alma mater.

The project was a townhouse in Santa Fe, which was to employ sitecast concrete with CMU infill and stucco finish. The second-year students acquitted themselves nicely for the most part in their presentations, many offering a compelling handling of space and beginning grasp of how to employ sustainable techniques and strategies such as thermal mass to moderate temperature swings and passive cooling through stack effects.

Opting for Jimmy John’s over the falafel sandwich option for lunch in downtown Muncie, had a nice dinner after the review with Prof. Woodfin, his wife, and our fellow jurors: Jack Munson of Richardson Munson and Wier, Indianapolis; and John Isch of RWA Architects, Cincinnati.

We Got An Award!

The City of Chicago was nice enough this morning to give one of our projects a 2009 Chicago Landmark Award for Preservation Excellence. The project in question was the interior and exterior renovation with an addition, to a house in the Logan Square Boulevards Landmark District. Other award recepients this year included the restoration of the Palmer House Hilton on State Street, The West Town State Bank Building at Madison & Western, 310-318 S. Michigan Ave (the ‘beehive’ building), The Quinn Chapel, and the South Shore Cultural Center, among others. The ceremenony, which was held in the newly restored Honore Room at the Palmer house, was presided over by David Mosena, the Chairman of the Commission on Chicago Landmarks. 35th Ward Alderman Rey Colon joined the clients and myself in accepting the award.

This was a nice end to a six year long project that saw 3 contractors, a lengthy landmarks review process, a trip to the building board of appeals, and a lot of work on the part of us and the client.

Flaming the Cypress

Derek Ottens of Green Cross Build, the general contractor for the garage experiment project burns the rain screen cladding for it’s own good. The wood was originally flooring and is already finished & sealed on one face. The remaining faces are being charred to seal them from the elements. The wood is then installed with the charred side facing out (see image below).

Shingle stylin’

The roof membrane is on and siding (big shingles!) is going up. See the latest progress photos.

Being green…

… sometimes means disconnecting your downspouts.

This photo taken at the Coleman garage jobsite after the rear stairs were demolished (not part of our contract, otherwise we’d have insisted on deconstruction!).

Puppy and skeleton-bear?

It’s manipulative, I know, but would you really click this link like we want you to do if I had titled it “Even More Garage Progress?” Thought not.

From a jobsite fence: the contractor thinks it’s a cute puppy holding a teddy bear. I think it’s a menacing primate battling a skeleton-bear. Say what you will about how my mind works, but it’s my blog entry.

While you’re deciding for yourself… see even more garage progress photos.

On the Boards

It’s funny how jobs wind up with nicknames in an office. Usually it is just the clients name, the street name, address, etc. since those are easy and tend to avoid confusion. Sometimes though, it’s a characteristic of a job or client that gets attached. For example, on a recent job the clients were a couple who both happened to have the same avocation, teaching actors how to fight and otherwise be convincingly violent on stage. Even though they are two of the nicest and  most easy going people I know, the job got the shorthand of “the violence guys”

More Garage Progress

See progress photos on slab and framing.

Garage progress

See progress photos on slab and framing.

How far can you push materials reuse on a little garage?

Fig. 1. The existing garage being deconstructed.

Hampton Avery Architects has designed a new two-car garage with rooftop garden/deck to replace an old existing wood-framed garage on a concrete slab-on-grade. There is effectively no such thing as demolition on this project.

NEW: See the online photo gallery.

Dispatches from the Frontlines

Kirk Douglas hard at work in his role as an architect in the 1960 film "Strangers When We Meet."

For those of you who truly believe the film versions, in which architects often wear black, drive nice fast cars, and romance beautiful and complex women… please don’t let us burst your bubble.

You may stop reading NOW.

For those of you willing to to face the fact that, while we as upstanding professionals are charged with the Health, Safety, and Welfare of the public… this often means doing some pretty mundane stuff along with the fun stuff. If you’re willing to go along with us on this journey, we’d be happy to have you. We’ll be doing a series of ‘Dispatches from the Frontlines’ in the near future, so tune in.

Here’s a quick one to tide you over.

Mt. Airy Public Library revisited

Recycling is not as good as reuse - we know that.

Okay, so let’s call this reuse.

To pay homage to Edward Mazria of Architecture 2030, a guy helping lead the charge to reduce the carbon footprint of buildings, we reuse, or revisit, an earlier post on his firm’s Mt. Airy Public Library - which is definitely NOT an energy hog.

The Mt. Airy, NC Public Library: A Case Study

While home for Thanksgiving in North Carolina, I visited, with my father, a small city near the Blue Ridge Mountains that served as the model for the town of Mayberry on The Andy Griffith Show. The public library makes a strong case for passive solar and daylighting design… while being a good neighbor, too.

Fig. 1. Exterior view showing south- and west-facing clerestories with exterior light shelves that extend natural light onto the ceilings while shading the large windows below from high summer sun.