Category: Abode

We caught up with the co-founder of Formwork Architecture to see what she’s currently working on, why she loves practicing in Charlottesville, and how a line of Brazilian modernist furniture in her childhood home helped hone her aesthetic.

Why architecture?

It makes me very happy most of the time I am practicing it. I consider architecture to be all design questions related to the environment, from the smallest scales to the largest scales—the spoon to the city. So it would be impossible to get bored and there is always something new.

The practice also includes so many different things—meeting all kinds of different people, learning about all kinds of different places, materials, methods of making, and lives. It involves going to places and spending time there. It involves sitting and drawing and thinking. Finally, I love the pace. Projects start, finish, and end. Some are short and some are long.

Also, I am not qualified to do anything else.

Why did you choose to practice in Virginia?

I fell into practice in Virginia. I came in 1999 to give a lecture at UVA. I stayed for several days as a guest critic in the landscape department. During that time, I met my now husband and partner, Robert Nichols. I came back to be close to him and to teach at UVA for a year (that turned into many years of teaching at UVA), and thought that we would move to Miami Beach where I had a practice with Rene Gonzalez.

I never imagined myself anywhere but in a large city. But I never left Charlottesville. I love it. It’s an amazing community. I never imagined I would know so many people in my community and that I would be so knitted in. How can it get any better than designing for so many people that you care about or get to care about and know through the process of designing for them?

What was your life like as a child and how did it lead you to design?

My parents are Cuban exiles. When I was little we lived in Brazil. There, my father worked for a furniture company called Oca. It made a lot of the Brazilian modernist furniture that is so famous now (represented by places such as R & Company in New York City, which is curated by Cate Andrews, a former Charlottesville resident). Our house was furnished almost exclusively with Sergio Rodrigues’ furniture and later, when we moved to the United States, my mother added some very special antiques. Almost all my detail concepts stem from what I learned living with this beautiful furniture. I try to channel Sergio all the time. To combine the modern and the sensual is the most special moment I look for.

My father became a developer and builder and I was around a lot of construction, many architects, and their drawings. I learned how to read architectural drawings at an early age. A usual weekend activity was to drive around and admire pieces of land. One day, my parents found a property with a farmer’s house on it, a pond out front. The land was a natural hammock (a native Florida ecosystem). They fell in love with it.

The house was very different from the suburban houses typical in South Florida. It extended itself into the hammock in every way. It had very tall ceilings and huge doors and windows. Because of the climate, we lived on long screened-in terraces that were all along both sides of the house from October to May. Huge sliding panels opened the indoors to the outdoors, until it got too hot to stay outside. I realized that this farmer who had designed the house for his beloved wife on his own, made his house to blend into its place and to optimize the good qualities of its environment while mitigating the tougher ones (mosquitoes and the heat!).

So knowing what an architect does, appreciating what designers do, and that the continuum from furniture to house to landscape is all part of this potentially uplifting human experience at the hands of a designer/person, I set out to study design.

On process: How does it begin?

Process starts and ends with paying attention. Letting the place, the moment, the people tell you stuff. Lots of stuff. It’s really smart to notice the obvious stuff. Note it, articulate it. And letting that stuff start prioritizing itself for you as you sit back and think. I also let other things that happen to come along during the time I am thinking about a project, but that are seemingly wholly unrelated, come into play. No two projects go through the same Process (the one with the capital P). But they often go through the same process (the little p) or way to organize projects. That’s a lot lessinteresting to talk about, but we need the process too.

What’s in the studio at the moment?

We have a really fantastic mix of projects in the studio right now. We just finished a great collaboration with Will Richey on the new Alley Light on South First Street. That guy and Jose de Brito know so much about food. About wine! And Will is so laser-focused and yet so incredibly open to our design input. He put faith in our ideas and banged them out in a very short time.

Our project at Turkey Saddle, where we collaborated with Anna Boeschenstein, built by Ace Contracting, will be coming out in Dwell magazine’s April Indoor/Outdoor issue.

We are working for an incredible firm that is rehabilitating and renovating a wonderful set of buildings and courtyards in Downtown Charlottesville.

Several residential projects in Florida and Tortola in the British Virgin Islands are finishing up and starting up as well. And we are in various phases of design and construction on several incredibly special residential projects here in Charlottesville.

How would you assess the state of architecture in our region?

Since I arrived in 1999, I find an increasing interest in design. Firms such as Nelson Byrd Woltz and Gregg Bleam and all the incredible landscape architects in Charlottesville have led the charge and highlighted how special our place is. We have a big, robust, and talented architectural community in Charlottesville and in the last decade, the city has benefited from the inclusion of work by many modern architects too, which is, to me, a great sign that we are a community with faith in the future.

Ingrid Cordano and her husband are experts in kitchen design.

“This is the third kitchen we’ve designed during our marriage,” she said. And it shows. The Cordanos’ Belmont home is a modern treasure that feels fresh and light at first pass: long, straight lines converge into interesting architectural features punctuated by bright, lively colors. And everything has been carefully conceived.

The Cordanos bought the Belmont lot a few years before they began working on designing their forever home. They chose to work with Latitude 38, a local design and build firm that specializes in ecofriendly construction with a distinctly modern aesthetic. Construction began in October 2012 and the house was ready for move-in in June of 2013.

“For me, the kitchen needs to be in the center of the house,” she said. “It’s where I spend 85 percent of my time. It needed to have access to what is going on around the house, especially with young kids.”

Ultimately, Cordano wanted a kitchen that was accessible to the family, but not so much so that she would get no alone time. When she is cooking, Cordano is focused, so she designed a space where the most often-used items—dishes for everyday dinner, silverware, or even napkins—would be at the easy disposal of her daughters, ages 6 and 4. Take the dishwasher: It sits adjacent to a low drawer that stores plates, cups, and pots, so emptying it does not become an Olympic event of coordination and agility.

Cordano is a chef and an engineer by trade. After graduating from UVA, she and her husband moved to New York City, where she attended culinary school and became a personal chef. “That justified having a big kitchen,” she said, with a proud smile.

The space is indeed large, but it doesn’t overrun the nearby TV room or the central staircase that leads to the sleeping quarters.

Modern appliances and light, non-contrasting materials adorn every surface of the space, another hint that the kitchen was built before the rest of the house.

Cordano admits to one extravagance.

“I designed a lot of the kitchen around a dish-drying cabinet,” she said. “In Finland, where I was born and spend a lot of time, we have things called drying cabinets instead of having a dish drainer on the counter.” The cabinet rests on one end of a butcher block countertop that runs the entire length of a wall of windows.

Cordano’s Finnish heritage is evident in other design choices, too—from the white IKEA cabinets to the appliances to the white speckled countertop. The eye moves from place to place with ease and relaxation.

“I know white is trendy, but for me, white is timeless,” she said. “I wanted something that felt Scandinavian.”

The sink sits next to the drying cabinet. The opposite leg of the U-shaped space is reserved for the big refrigerator and the cooktop, which is surrounded by more cabinetry.

The long butcher-block countertop is a handy office space for Cordano, who admits to moving her computer to that spot for late-night Internet browsing. During the day, the countertop houses small appliances used in everyday cooking.

Her favorite feature, however, is the view from the window above the butcher block counter. The light hits the right spots all day long and the sun shines through big, wide windows, which are elevated enough from the working space that they preserve a little intimacy and privacy from the neighbors.

“I think that it is within everyone’s grasp to design a good kitchen,” she said. Her advice? “Just write down all the tasks that you have to do in the kitchen on a day-to-day basis and you can fine-tune the design based on that.”

It was none too inspiring—just a paved area behind a Downtown house-turned-office. But the people behind the Blue Moon Fund, a philanthropic organization that occupies the building, had a vision for their outdoor space that went far beyond simply sprucing up the spot where they park their cars. “They approached us to create a progressive landscape,” said Tommy Solomon, a designer with Nelson Byrd Woltz Landscape Architects. “To set a new standard for landscapes in the city.”

The mission was not only to create a more pleasing approach to the rear of the building; it also included attracting wildlife, creatively dealing with stormwater on site, and serving as an example of healthy native ecosystems. All on a single city lot.

In answer to that fairly tall order, the firm came up with this basic scheme: Parking would move to the extreme rear of the lot, and those exiting their cars would travel along a “spine”—i.e., a boardwalk—on their way to the courtyard just behind the building. Along the way, they’d experience several different environments: a grove of river birch trees, a small meadow planted with native species, and perennial beds. “We reorganized the entry sequence for employees,” said Solomon. “It became an immersive experience.”

The project aimed to be as green as possible. For example, Solomon and his colleagues designed the site to deal with stormwater in several interconnected ways—containing it in a cistern, allowing it to evaporate, and channeling it to a bioretention area where it can safely infiltrate the ground—thus keeping runoff out of the city sewer system. “This site would handle a 10-year storm event before any water leaves the site,” said Solomon. “Everything is connected, like a natural system would be.”

Plantings, too, reflect the firm’s and the client’s shared ecological interest. Native grasses and sedges fill in the rain gardens. Warm season perennials in the meadow demonstrate what this fast-disappearing ecosystem would have looked like before invasives arrived. Winterberry provides an understory to the ethereal river birches at the rear end of the boardwalk. And perennials near the courtyard are chosen to attract pollinators.

Aside from the project’s lofty goals, it is quite simply a beautiful place. As the boardwalk slopes down on its way toward the building, board-form concrete walls rise up to create a private space in the form of a bluestone courtyard, which employees can not only use as an outdoor meeting spot, but enjoy viewing from within the office. The geometric cut stone is offset by rough, angular boulders from the Alberene soapstone quarry in Schuyler.

“The context is very urban—it’s close to Downtown, and the railroads are right there,” said Solomon. “So the palette is very honest: concrete, metal, stone, wood.” Honest, but not without poetry—in the interplay between aluminum railing and delicate grasses, or the diagonal angle of the boardwalk as it lands, boldly demarcated by a channel of dark stone dust, within the courtyard.

As Solomon put it, the project embodies “implied simplicity” but rewards a close look with many layers of meaning. It is a total reimagining of a small space, made significant by the attention. “I don’t think there’s an inch of the site left untouched,” said Solomon.

 

The breakdown

Approximately 4,000 square feet

Materials or finishes

Board-formed concrete from Allied Concrete; weathered steel walls and aluminum guardrails/metalwork fabricated by Shickel Corp.; Bluestone terrace; soapstone boulders from Alberene Soapstone Company; soapstone fountain designed and fabricated by sculptor Toru Oba; FSC-certified ipe wood boardwalk; FSC certified cedar screenwall; steel photovoltaic array designed by architect Stoneking/von Storch.

Lighting

Fixtures at ipe boardwalk are low-profile path lights by Hunza; fixtures in garden are stake lights by Lumiere

Plant selections

Rain garden at parking court: Swamp Milk Weed, Tawny Cotton Grass, Soft Rush, Virginia Mountainmint; Grove at bioretention: River Birch underplanted with Winterberry; Demonstration native warm-season meadow: Native anemone, Andropogon, Lance Leaf Coreopsis, Coneflower (Echinacea), Purple Lovegrass, Common Boneset, Switchgrass, Aromatic Aster, Little Bluestem; Mound: Prairie Dropseed (native grass); Terraced perennial beds: Bistort, White Coneflower (white Echinacea), Blue Star Amsonia; Hedges in central garden: Dwarf Fothergilla; Hedges at the ramp: American Cranberry Viburnum; Perennials surrounding the lower terrace: Common Lady’s Mantle, Snowdrop Windflower, Black Cohosh, White Bleeding Heart, Purple Coneflower (Echinacea), Coral Bells, Blazing Star (Liatris), Wild Bergamot, Beard Tongue, Black-eyed Susan, Foamflower, Spiked Speedwell; Tree at lower courtyard: Sweetbay Magnolia

Richard and Linda Shank loved their last house, which he’d designed for them in Ednam Forest. But it had two problems. One was the lack of a view. The other was deer.

During their 20 years there, he said, “The deer took over our landscaping.” When they decided to relocate, they searched for a site with views, and found unbeatable vistas at the top of a mountain in Ivy. Shank set to work on a design that would include a “deer-free zone” in the form of a courtyard.

Three sides of the courtyard would be formed by the house—a central portion and two wings. Rather than a high wall to mark the fourth side, there is a vanishing-edge pool. The whole house is oriented toward this view: the Blue Ridge to the northwest, a carpet of woods and fields, and the changing sky reflected in the pool.

“I wouldn’t want to drive to the top of a mountain and not see anything,” Shank said.

Since the couple moved here in 2001, they’ve found that the courtyard’s dining area draws them outside much of the year for meals. Even from inside, wide expanses of glass make the view a constant presence. Upon entering the house, one immediately confronts the view through a tall bank of windows, and many corners feature wraparound windows to visually draw the outdoors in.

Working better

Sublime prospects aside, the house is both beautiful and highly functional within its brick walls.

Shank had designed two previous houses in Charlottesville for his family. With the couple’s two children grown, this was to be “a house to suit us through older age.” That means low-maintenance and easy to clean. Though it has three levels, the house facilitates one-story living, and there is an elevator shaft awaiting an elevator should it ever be needed. (The basement level houses two guest bedrooms, a garage, and a wine cellar; upstairs, an office affords views of the mountains.)

Many decisions here grew from a desire to make life run smoothly. “My ancestry goes back to the Swiss,” Shank explained. “Form follows function. It’s got to work.” For example, each occupant of the master bedroom has a dedicated pathway from the customary side of the bed, around the corner to a vanity (extra high for ergonomics) and a water closet.

Similarly, the laundry room is nearby to the dressing area, and the “wet zone” (shower stall, tub, and sauna) opens onto the courtyard for easy access to pool and hot tub

Nearly all storage is built in, eliminating the need for many pieces of furniture beyond the carefully chosen, modernist-style seating and tables that animate the living spaces. One of the house’s signature elements is the dining area, demarcated by two floor-to-ceiling banks of built-in mahogany cabinets. These separate the dining area from the adjacent living room and kitchen, but also make a place to tuck away linens, hide a wet bar, and even include doors that can close off the view of the kitchen. Their smooth surfaces are uninterrupted by pulls or knobs.

Shank designed the kitchen, with its black granite countertops and white wooden cabinets, for maximum efficiency. The galley arrangement permits an easy flow from refrigerator to prep area, then to cook surface, dining room, and back to the cleanup zone. A separate coffee area and bar stools flank one side of the central workspace, while the other side houses cookbooks and music storage.

Though none of the rooms in the house feel cavernous, they are spacious, and Shank permits a certain grandeur to be present—as in the sizeable vent hood that becomes almost a sculptural piece within the kitchen. There’s a similar boldness to the large circular window in the living room. “I think of it as a porthole,” Shank said, pointing out that its diameter is the same as that of the hot tub it looks onto.

Top-notch materials—warm French limestone floors, for one—bring a luxurious feel to the house, while modernist detailing keeps it clean. There are no baseboards, and most closet doors lack hardware so that they disappear into the walls.

Shallow arcs are a motif throughout, the largest instance being the curved outer walls of the house’s two wings. These curves, interrupted by fireplaces in the living room and master bedroom, lend unusual shapes to interior spaces.

A particularly beautiful spot is one that could have been a throwaway: the hall between the master bathroom and closet. Defined by glass block walls and lit by a skylight running along its length, it’s full of pearly, subtle light, while the big view lies straight ahead through the large windows in the exercise room at the end of the hall.

Not only is the space visually striking, it has a deep quiet—due to the mountaintop location, as well as to a floor built from precast concrete that blocks sound (and contains radiant heating tubes for comfortable temperature control).

Shank said he learned many lessons from his two previous houses and brought them to bear in the technical and aesthetic aspects of this home. “When you design your own house,” he said, “you can design it to live like you’d like to.”

 

Brick house

Having clad a previous house in wood, Shank chose brick for the exterior of this one, banking on its durability. “It’s the local material that’s most used, and also relatively maintenance-free,” he said. “It also worked with the form—the curving walls.”

Mason Jerry Hall used hand-molded brick from the Old Virginia Brick company, and even the mortar is carefully chosen. “The mortar is close to the color of the brick,” Shank explained, “so that the shape of the building becomes more important than individual bricks.”

On the house’s two wings, the brick pattern is relatively simple. But on the center portion, it’s highly articulated, with a raised texture and bricks laid both horizontally and vertical. “It’s beautiful when the sun hits it,” said Linda Shank.—E.H.

Resides in: Charlottesville

Best known for: Home goods shop Roxie Daisy

1. Antique or modern? Antique with touches of modern here and there.

2. City or country? Both! How can you pick? Go for a walk down a river or go for a walk through Barneys and I am a happy woman.

3. Which colors do you gravitate toward? Color? What’s that? I’m addicted to neutrals, but I like a pop of color here and there. Don’t make me choose!

4. Which materials or textures do you frequently use in your own home? Linen! Hemp! Mohair!

5. What is your favorite interior design-related word? Texture. I love mixing different textures to create a warm and inviting environment, especially mixing romantic and rustic.

6. Does your home look like the one you grew up in? My mother wrote about home interiors, so I was always aware of elements of design I loved, which happen to overlap with hers. My home now has pieces of my childhood home as well as beautiful things my husband and I have collected over the years.

7. What’s one thing that can really transform a room? A beautiful paint finish that reflects light. The finish is important!

8. Favorite designer? The people who influence me most tend to be stylists as opposed to designers. I love seeing how people put things together in an interesting way, specifically Hans Blomquist and Sibella Court.

9. Which design blog, website, TV show, or magazine do you peruse religiously? I should say an interior design blog, but I tend to get my inspiration from books. In all honesty, the blog I am addicted to is a beauty blog called Into The Gloss.

10. Décor-wise, what should a homeowner never scrimp on? Good, basic essential pieces, like a couch or a great rug.

11. Design rule you like to break? I like to buy art because I love the piece, not to match an interior. That may not be a design rule, but I think you should surround yourself with things you love even if it doesn’t match your couch. If I had to say one “rule,” it would be how low or high you should hang your chandelier.

12. What is your favorite room in your house? My kitchen.

13. What is your most treasured possession? I think because it was recently the holiday time, my most treasured possessions that come to mind are the ornaments my two boys made when they were little.

14. What do you wish you could do without? My hairdryer.

15. What are you afraid to DIY? I don’t do DIY. I’m afraid of it all.

16. Have you ever had a change of heart about an object or a style? Yes, all the time!

17. If you could live in one historical figure’s house, whose would it be? Goldilocks and the Three Bears. It looks like a sweet cottage!

18. On what movie set would you like to live? Kate Winslet’s English cottage in The Holiday.

19. If you were reborn as a piece of furniture or an object, what would it be? A farm table.

20. What is your first design memory? Dusting the furniture in my dad’s showroom at the High Point Market in exchange for Krispy Kreme doughnuts.

Want to know more? Visit the shop online at roxiedaisy.com or in person at 101 E. Water St.

Good design can be found almost anywhere. This month, we’re taking our cues from Justin Ross’ long-awaited Stonefield eatery Parallel 38. Like its menu, the restaurant’s décor is a mixed bag of modern, rustic, and ethnic, with woodsy accents and oil-rubbed bronze finishes. Ross and his girlfriend were involed in every aspect of the restaurant’s design, right down to the lighting. Here’s how it all came together.

An elaborate chalk drawing by Virginia-based artist Sam Welty (757-692-9845, samwelty.com) adorns the back wall of the restaurant, depicting the regions along the 38th parallel: the Greek Ionian Islands, Spain’s Alicante region, Calabria in Italy, the Setubal Peninsula in Portugal, Napa Valley in California, and Central Virginia. Love that wall color? It’s food themed: Benjamin Moore’s Black Bean Soup.

Custom walnut woodwork from Esmont’s Lost Mountain Woodcrafts (531-5682) provide space for the small-plate restaurant’s extensive wine list and a communal table for 12. Ross sourced the pendant lighting from Richmond-based Gypsy Hill Electric (804-921-5652, gypsyhillelectric.com).

The lounge tables came from Old Cold Storage Warehouse (263-4369, nelsonstoragellc.com) in Nelson, which specializes in reclaiming architectural and industrial salvage and antiques. They’re actually refurbished railroad carts!

 

A third generation builder, Jeff Cianciotti started out in the residential construction market. But a few years after that, he turned to masonry when a friend hired him to help run his small business. “I helped it grow into a diverse company that worked on jobs for homeowners, production builders, large custom homes, and light commercial jobs,” he said. With the collapse of the housing market, the friend took his business to Northern Virginia, leaving the niche wide open in Central Virginia. Cianciotti opened Woodstone Construction in the summer of 2010.

“I took over where he left off and never looked back,” Cianciotti said. “Our company has grown tremendously over the last three and a half years.”

Having seen the downturn impact his industry, Cianciotti knows plenty of industry folks are seeking less expensive masonry products, but he’s still committed to old-fashioned stone and brick. “We’re working hard to preserve the historical look and feel in the Charlottesville area,” he said.

Are you from Charlottesville originally?
After my parents moved to Greene County in the early ’90s, I fell in love with the area, so much that I moved my family down in 2003. I built a house for my family and my in-laws in Madison County.

Describe your aesthetic in five words or less.
Elegant, traditional, contemporary, historical preservation, rich in design.

Where do you stand with form vs. function?
Having been in the building industry my entire life, and having been involved in a huge variety of projects, I have met a lot of people with an abundance of ideas. Those ideas that I have heard, seen, and learned over the years have made me realize that you really need both form and function. With the experience I have gained, I have learned you can walk the line between the two.

What would you say is your specialty?
I would say that design-build would be our specialty. I really like working one-on-one with homeowners and builders to help them design exactly what they are looking for. Our business ranges from the small homeowner jobs and production work for builders to large custom homes and light commercial work. We provide all aspects of masonry work.

What is your favorite thing you’ve ever made?
I particularly love to design outdoor fireplaces given that this is a place where people like to unwind and relax after a long hard workweek. There are so many different designs, looks, and feel of outdoor fireplaces, that this is an area I can use my creative edge to create a peaceful, fun, relaxing place for people to enjoy.

What else should we know about Woodstone? Our company mostly started with all production brickwork working for the majority of builders in the Charlottesville area. Over the years, we have expanded to include work in many other counties in Central Virginia. And most of our work has gradually moved towards more natural building stone, stone patios, and fireplaces, than brickwork. Our company also has very knowledgeable supervisors on the job. My father, who has worked in the building industry his entire life, works with us and we employ three licensed contractors. Knowledge is something that we pride ourselves on.

Get in touch
Have a project in mind for Jeff? Call 989-9223 or visit woodstone-construction.com for more information.

Think of history in Charlottesville, and you might think first of Court Square, Monticello, and other seats of power. But the city has an industrial past, too, and it’s still visible in places like the Silk Mill Building, an 1898 factory whose brick façade is tucked behind the Preston Avenue Bodo’s.

Eighteen years ago—after stints as a silk mill and a pencil factory—the building underwent a total renovation to become office space. Today it houses a variety of tenants, from high-tech medical firms to psychotherapists. One of the most recent additions? City Clay, the ceramics center that you probably remember from its former location on the corner of Main and McIntire.

For Randy Bill, City Clay’s owner, the character of the Silk Mill Building is part of what makes it right for her business. “I love the architecture,” she said. “It’s fun to be in.” Upon entering the building, visitors find themselves in a three-story-tall stairwell, whose exposed-brick walls show more than a century’s worth of paint, forming a pleasingly layered patina.

Inside the clay studio, the original bones of the building—wooden posts and beams and a wooden floor laid on the diagonal—shine through. City Clay occupies what used to be two separate offices, and has space for a sculpture classroom, two wheel-throwing classrooms, lots of shelves, and member studios. All are well-lit due to windows on three sides of the space. “Once we were able to open the walls and allow the light to come through, it made it incredibly wonderful,” Bill said.

Bill, who moved the business here last June, is pleased with her new workspace. “I love the fact that it was built for people making things,” she said. “I feel like we’ve found our home.”

We caught up with Scott Weiss to see what he’s currently working on, how he ended up practicing in Virginia, and why a 1974 action drama helped inspire him to become an architect. Here’s what he had to say.

Why architecture?
I have always been artistic, but I have never felt that I was particularly great at any medium other than architecture, which I consider an art—an expensive-to-create art with a permanence and often an influence in the way we and those around us live and experience that life. How great is art that can do that?

Why did you choose to practice in Virginia?
I didn’t. I chose to practice in California, however for practical reasons, my family and I decided to relocate from California and we checked out Charlottesville, as I had not been back in the 20 or so years since I graduated from the School of Architecture at UVA. We found it a beautiful small town perfect for raising children. In addition, there was a familiarity in the architecture in Virginia that was less present in Arizona (where I went to graduate school) and California. It seemed more like “home.”

 What was your life like as a child and how did it lead you to design?
I knew before I knew the word “architect” that I wanted to design buildings for a living. I always enjoyed building with Legos and drawing. I saw my mother editing a floor plan in a magazine in order to suit her—as if she might build it one day—and I began to do the same. That was followed by my constantly (in my free time, in school, wherever) designing what I thought were luxurious homes. I loved to look at home plan and design magazines and really became fascinated with what was then called contemporary architecture.

I vividly remember sharp angles, curved walls, and obnoxious interior colors of designs that we would now consider very ’70s, and I drank it all in. I saw The Towering Inferno and besides the excitement of the actual movie, I was blown away by the modern skyscraper, the huge, vaulted interior spaces. I tried to design skyscrapers, not even bored by the fact that each floor was basically the same. I would go to the library and find old issues of Architectural Record and Xerox floor plans of buildings that I found fascinating—larger, different types of buildings such as hospitals, college buildings, but also cutting-edge houses.

Tell us about your college studio experience. Was there a stand-out teacher who had a lasting impact on you?
I was always lacking in confidence when I saw other students doing what I wanted to do, and sometimes better. It took me a while to find my groove, to be able to defend my choices in design despite criticism or the fact that someone else had a well-designed and well-executed project. I honestly do not even remember most of my undergraduate studio professors from UVA. The one professor who really stands out in my memory was Max Underwood, who taught an urban design class at the Arizona State University College of Architecture and Urban Design, where I received my master’s degree. He taught us how cities developed through history and how their transformations reflected history itself. His enthusiasm for the subject was infectious. He used the term “urban fabric,” which I thought perfectly described a city and the organic way it develops, like a quilt with no real master plan. Upon our first building design review, he looked at my symmetric design, laughed, and said, “You’re the one from UVA, right?”

On process: How does it begin?
When I design a project, the site is the first thing that dictates some basic starting points. Where is the view? Where is the sun? How does the site affect the construction or how would the building on the site interact (if applicable) to other nearby buildings or natural features? I discuss the program and budget with the client, and hopefully get a solid idea of what they are thinking. Though I’ll be honest, by that time, I often have some idea of how I think the design should proceed. I love when a client provides me with images from magazines or from websites that illustrate styles or spaces that they find appealing. I love even more when a client sees my vision of what their project can be.

What inspires you?
Beautiful, often intimate, spaces. Not just the spaces, though, but the perception one gets when passing from one space to the other. One thing I remember about Max Underwood leading his students through the intricacies of European cities is his emphasis not on the actual piazza we were in, but how one—without a map—can experience the progression from one space to the other, noting a distant campanile or church dome beyond, and how these elements made the often-irregular transition from place to place seem natural. It was like exploring, discovering, with a surprise here and a pizza and beer there.

I am also inspired by the way various materials can be used creatively with each other and by views that can be framed or enhanced by architecture. Like Frank Lloyd Wright, I see architecture as an extension of the outdoors, something to work with nature and its surroundings, not dominate over it.

How does the site or sense of place inform architecture for you?
I believe the previous question really begins the discussion of “sense of place,” as the buildings we passed from piazza to piazza (and pizza to pizza) were for the most part not as monumental as the whole picture. Not every building can be the church or the city hall. Most are part of the urban fabric (see what a great term that is?), the “boring” stitches of red and green and blue without which the fabric could not exist. They are what the monuments complement.

What’s in the studio at the moment?
I am excited to be designing a long, linear house on a wooded bluff overlooking the Shenandoah River, with a stone spine separating the circulation space from the individual rooms, whose river-facing walls will be comprised of large windows providing expansive views of the river, and—almost more importantly—when open, will provide the constant sound of rushing water. I also am beginning work on a remodel/addition for a small (albeit four-story) home near Downtown Charlottesville, which has a lot of potential and a client who sees that. In addition, I do a lot of design work for a prolific home builder in the area, which I find fun.

In the Piedmont, large red brick houses have always had a certain kind of monumental grandeur in the landscape. They are Virginia’s architecture—a tall central house, often hyphenated with ancillary spaces to the sides, large and formal, yet quiet and elegant—and were the standard bearer of sophistication in their time.

I admire them most often in late autumn when my wife and I take day trips from Richmond before winter ties us down, and while a modernist at heart, I will stop the car for a grand home. We have them for miles along Monument Avenue and along the James River west of the city. But in Albemarle, they are woven into a rolling tapestry of orchards, fields, and vineyards that spread widely across a verdant Eden and evoke an idea in addition to a place.

When making architecture, I like to take a step away from the drawings, look back at them, and squint my eyes a bit. It blurs away the unnecessary. If the whole thing hangs together well enough, it will read as a distillation of a few singular gestures. And, when that happens, it’s usually a really good sign early on that the idea is strong.

So, when I first became aware of architect Dick Shank’s modernist home several years ago, I quite admired its compositional purity. Two wide, red brick chimneys set against three red brick hierarchically placed pavilions with “arms” that frame a view. The house follows the logic of that grand Piedmont lineage, yet is anything but traditional. There is nothing superfluous about its massing or detailing, but its formal—if not totemic —presence in a clearing on a mound in a woodland setting is comfortingly familiar. This, I thought, is modern architecture for Virginia, and it belongs here in a way that a Rick Joy house belongs in Tucson—fitting in without turning wistful.

Inside, the home’s transformation is fulfilled. At a glance, you might not be in Virginia, but large windows are apertures, and the foreground is a visceral counterpoint to beyond. Spaces are thoroughly modern, bright, and exacting in detail. There are few but very deft finishes in white, stainless steel, and wood tones that make an almost universally timeless palette.

In this month’s ABODE, Shank’s house  amidst a tradition-bound rural neighborhood shows how architecture can respond to the cultural influences of its context with relevance for its own time in order to serve the precise needs of its occupant. In town, we’re featuring a tight, Scandinavian-inspired, all-white glossy kitchen , and a Downtown landscape (p.30) with a skillful overlay of stone and wood plank walks that rise just above the ground, and seem to float across a tightly bound urban garden. Across these projects and at varying scales, it is the endeavor to manifest both material and compositional clarity as a unifying strategy that brings an idea and a place together.—Josh McCullar, Editor-at-large