Meadow House

Kuhn Riddle received last year’s highest recognition from the Western Massachusetts American Institute of Architects, the 2010 Honor Award, for its “Meadow House.”

In their review of the project, the jurors called it “beautifully restrained,” noting that it revealed a “clarity, simplicity, and depth of understanding of the space.” The project’s site strategy was praised for “[claiming] the site without dominating it.”

KRA’S Elizabeth Morgan reflects on the project’s development to date:

This project began with a phone call from Tim Tomlinson, a general contractor in Western Massachusetts with whom we’ve worked on a range of residential projects. Tim had purchased a site in Hadley, MA a few years ago as a development investment.

When he called, he explained that he didn’t want to build a spec house and hope for the best —the market is too tenuous right now for such a risky move. So instead, he asked us to work with him to develop a comprehensive design for the site that included a small cluster of sustainable homes.

Hadley is an agricultural community spread across the plain of a river valley. Located between two college towns, it is a place with an iconic vernacular history of farmhouses and tobacco barns. The site, a seven-acre parcel near Amherst’s downtown and Hadley’s commercial district, is a rolling meadow that can accommodate three building lots. As planned, the property preserves two acres of shared open space that can never be developed.

Although the site is on the edge of a suburban zone, it is distinctly rural in character. We felt that the natural qualities of the site could be maintained if we conceived of outdoor spaces around each home as small jewels of manicured space set into an otherwise uncultivated landscape.

For the houses, we developed a design for a single-story, 2,000 square foot home with three bedrooms. The size, layout, and spaces can accommodate a variety of homeowners, from new families with children to recent retirees.

The design of the house is inspired by the tobacco barns and farmhouses of Hadley. We wanted to evoke the traditional architecture of the area, while still creating something in-line with our more modern aesthetic as designers. We also felt that this “modern vernacular” approach to the project would appeal to a broad range of homeowners. The simple geometric forms of the building are easy to construct and formally distinct. They are both modern and traditional, crisp and inviting.

In response to the program, we broke up mass of the house by separating it into a living zone and a sleeping zone. With this approach, we maximized views out and sunlight into the spaces. The climate of each volume can be controlled independently, since the spaces would be naturally trading-off the times they were most in use—the living volume during the day and the sleeping volume at night.

We staggered these volumes on the site to create a semiprivate zone in the front of the house that was south facing. Rather than a singular object in a field, the houses appear as clusters of outbuildings and barns and create a series of outdoor rooms with different scales, orientations, and characters.

The project began with a phone call. It ends – for now – with a hope. That people will want to build the houses we’ve designed – on this site or another.

That they will want to live and grow old within a timeless house that is rooted to its region, in context with its surroundings. And if they build at the Hadley site, we hope, above all, that the meadow will thrive.

Elizabeth Morgan

River Deep, Mountain High

This spring’s “Architecture Through Film” series will focus on how rivers shape our cities and ourselves. The five films, ranging from critical documentaries to classic American cinema, provide an opportunity to examine how filmmakers portray rivers while also providing a backdrop for discussing our own relationships with waterways.

The films will be screened at Amherst College, and discussion will follow each film. KRA’s Andy Grogan and Hampshire College’s Thom Long will act as moderators. The series is sponsored by Western Massachusetts AIA and the Five College Architectural Studies Program. The complete schedule and location is available here.

The idea for this spring’s series emerged from a grant that the Five Colleges were awarded for their “Riverscaping” study. “Riverscaping” is a partnership with citizens, artists, and community leaders in Hamburg, Germany, an area that shares similar environmental and historical qualities with Massachusetts’ Pioneer Valley. Participants will explore ways to reconnect with rivers as a means to improve the environment and communities. More information is available at riverscaping.org.

And the winner is…

KRA’s Lindsay Schnarr has received the 2010 WMAIA Student Scholarship for her spring-semester studio work at the University of Massachusetts.

In the graduate studio project, Schnarr addressed strategies for revitalization of downtown Springfield, MA by focusing on Pynchon Plaza, an unutilized park constructed in the 1970s that once served as a primary passageway between the city’s Museum Quadrangle and historic Court Square.

More information is available on our website.

Buster Keaton, Studio Instructor

Buster Keaton would have made a great architecture studio instructor. His films reveal a deep understanding of the properties of the physical world and an exhilarating fearlessness in manipulating them. Watching his films, we’re struck by his ability to transform the familiar, helping us see the physical world in a different way.

As part of the Fall 2010 Architecture Through Film Series, KRA’s Andy Grogan will screen two Buster Keaton shorts this Monday evening at 6:30 pm in Amherst College’s Pruyne Lecture Hall (Fayerweather Hall).

Whether addressing the holy grail of manufactured housing or the mixed blessings of technology, Keaton was ahead of his time. The two films being screened, Electric House (1922) and One Week (1920), confront issues that architects are still grappling with. The crossed-wires of Electric House are like today’s computer virus, while One Week‘s prefab home feels presciently Gehry-esque.

Best of all – they’re really fun to watch.

Complete information about the series is available here. The Architecture Through Film Series is presented by The Western Massachusetts Chapter of the American Institute of Architects and the Five College Architectural Studies Program.

Back to School

– Elizabeth Morgan will be teaching a junior-year writing class in the Architecture Department at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst this fall.

– Andy Grogan is a guest critic this semester for Boston Architectural College’s Community Design Center studio. The studio will focus on a “Life Center” for the town of Needham, MA.