Lookout House
Architect // Archiphernalia
Description
A two-bedroom, two-bathroom beach cottage on the Massachusetts coast, Lookout House serves as a seaside retreat for a family of four. Intended as a quiet oceanfront escape, the cottage is also ideal for entertaining, but just large enough to sleep the family. The house is lifted dramatically off the ground to allow water to flow unimpeded below in the case of a powerful coastal storm. Designed to resist storm damage and sea level rise, the house is intended to last. Intentionally leaving a light footprint on the ground below, the 1.350 sf house requires very little landscaping maintenance. Because of a number of outside factors, this house was not built, but we imagine it as a prototype for future houses in other locations where an equal desire for minimal impact on the land exists.
Longmeadow Adult Community Center
Architect // Catlin Architecture
Description
We are pleased to have had the opportunity to design the new 26,300sf Adult Community Center for the Town of Longmeadow, MA. The center is now open and the local elders are enjoying the many available amenities and classes offered. Key amenities include a large multi-purpose room with performance stage, game room for cards and billiards, café with outdoor patio, arts/crafts classroom, classroom with a teaching kitchen, full commercial kitchen providing daily lunches, a fitness area with cardio and weight training, a full gymnasium with pickleball/volleyball/basketball/ping pong and a raised indoor walking/running track. Outdoor amenities include a large patio with a performance platform and four pickle ball courts. The center is located at Greenwood Park which includes a town swimming pool and playing fields.
Kancamagus 8 Enclosure
Architect // Bull Stockwell Allen
Description
Bull Stockwell Allen designed a first-of-its-kind, semi-enclosed pavilion that wraps around the Kancamagus 8 lift at Loon Mountain Resort. North America’s most technologically advanced chair lift, Kanc8 is an eight-seat, D-Line Doppelmayr chair with ergonomically shaped heated seats and tinted bubble. Opening up to an adjacent plaza, the Kanc8 pavilion creates a multi-use assembly space that stretches its value beyond the winter and ski season for year-round utilization. Kanc8 will provide skiers a covered loading experience, protecting them from the elements in the winter, and a loading base for bikers in the summer months. This custom open-air structure is notably different from its predecessor in drastic and eye-catching ways; with versatility and high-performing functionality being a critical consideration in this design, aesthetics were upheld to just as high a priority and standard, resulting in this stunning structure that nestles perfectly and unobtrusively into, rather than on, the site.
Highgarden
Architect // Bonin Architects
Description
In visualizing their new home, the owners had clear goals: "… a sense of history... a timelessness that will last through generations… comfortable and convenient for all age ranges." They were also especially thrilled to reclaim elements of the original home for reuse. Reclaimed items included the fieldstone fireplace built by their grandfather, twice reclaimed hand-hewn timbers, windows, doors, barn-board, and vintage plumbing fixtures. Accessibility was critical indoors and outdoors. Exterior landscape ramps, an elevator, and appropriate detailing throughout the home and property were essential. An accessible bunkroom and adjacent bath and barrier-free access to the screen porch, patios, and hot tub foster inclusivity for everyone. Outdoor living and gardening were of great importance as well. Elements such as the sedum-covered potting shed and fenced vegetable garden are essential. The plantings are heavy, perennial pollinators with blooms staggered throughout the summer, so the landscape is always colorful and changing.
