AWARDS 2012:
Interior Design Magazine BOY Awards 2012

ID BOY AWARD LOGO

Best of Year Awards
NEUTRA GLEN RESIDENCE > Kitchen Award

SULLIVAN OFFICE NYC > Small Office
AIA New England 2012 Design Awards

 
NEUTRA GLEN RESIDENCE > Remodeled Residential Project

 After
Before

Before

After
AIA Connecticut 2012 Design Awards

AMP STUDIO > Single Family Residential Project
LAKE RESIDENCE > Single Family Residential Project  

LONG ISLAND SOUND RESIDENCE > Single Family Residential Project

FEATURED PROJECTS
 
RENOVATION
38PR Scarsdale Renovation > NY

 

Phase I of the 38PR alteration had two large moves: the first eliminated a bulky, port-cochere, making the entrance to the home inviting, and streamlining the Tudor revival exterior; the second move activated a juxtaposition between modern and traditional. The alteration created large, open, light-filled living spaces, accentuated by the clean, horizontal lines and the material richness of modernist furniture pieces. The color palette stays balanced by blacks, beiges, whites, and an occasional earth tone. Simple, elegant details such as stainless steel and marble in the chimney, steel balustrades, and restored windows invite the inhabitant to engage with the architecture at a material scale. An exposed concrete floor below the foyer is an additional material surprise, underscoring the sophisticated simplicity of this interior.

 

INTERIOR
17BHR > Darien, CT
The Brushy Hill residence is a modern house nestled on a steep site overlooking a creek. The house serves as a quiet refuge for its owners, who were taken with multitude of trees that blanket the site — in every room, one looks out onto the forested lot and gets a sense that he is not just near the trees, but in the trees. The design concept for the house played up the views, allowing them to take center stage. The color palette in the living room and master bedroom furnishings were kept neutral to showcase the changing colors of the seasons out the windows beyond.

 

Both the furnishings and the materials were selected to give the spaces a clean, pared-down aesthetic. With a firm belief that less is more, a few exquisite materials were selected to bring each space to life: oil-rubbed metals, American black walnut, silky banana fiber rugs, and buttery leathers. Built-in furnishings were employed to bring a sense of clarity and unity to the house. Vibrant hues in the family room are intensified by the dynamic colors of the landscape beyond, a reminder that everywhere in this modern tree house, nature reigns supreme.

 

112RR > Washington, CT
Our addition/alteration to 122RR continues a progression of change; the original colonial farmhouse dates to 1910. An addition was made in 1980, and in 2012, Joeb Moore & Partners restored the existing spaces and is making an addition. The project results in an amalgamation of periods, which coexist in a rural, wooded site. The additions contain two large, wooden screens, which envelop perpendicular facades of the home; a reference to the traditional fences of rural New England, these screens divide the site, creating a separation from the road and adding privacy. The screens work with rocky knolls on the site, both natural and landscaped, to create nestled spaces and to emphasize the open vistas of the natural sanctuary to the rear of the home. Whereas the traditional purpose of subdividing rural property had agricultural intention, we use new constructed and natural elements to provide both open and intimates spaces on the site; the rear opens up onto a beautiful, hilly landscape, while the front has pocketed spaces that guide one through exterior and interior space, ultimately to the meadow on the other side of the house.

design

PROJECT IN PROGRESS: 
 
37HFR > Greenwich, CT

 

Located in the wooded Greenwich backcountry, 37HFR includes a main house and pool pavilion. The main house axis runs on a direct N-S alignment and hugs the front setback, taking advantage of the expanse of lawn between house and tennis court/pool pavilion.

 

The project is conceived as two simple horizontal bars: the basement and second floor. The ground floor, in-between the bars, employs a plan that stretches into the landscape, both east and west, with a series of vertical walls, acting as the primary structure and allowing for a well-defined series of interior living spaces. The walls make up a larger system of striations that include plantings and paving that bind the house with the site and beyond the tennis court to the pool pavilion.

 

The key spatial device and intention of the ground floor plan was to enhance the relationship between interior and exterior, by a series of gardens spaces defined between the vertical walls. In several locations, the garden spaces terrace or ramp directly into the basement, allowing for abundant natural light and views to the garden from the basement living spaces.

 

The roof is a streamlined reference to the traditional gable form, broken up with two sectional cuts or negative spaces that contrast with the horizontality of the bar. Each cut corresponds to the vertical circulation in the house, and contains skylights, heightening the experience of the double height void at both locations.

 

Site Plan

 

 

Section 1

 

 
First Floor Plan

 

 

Elevation 1

 

Model series:
Elevation 2
collaborate

 
COMPETITION > Joeb Moore & Partners Holiday Card Competition
Joeb considered all entries as winners, including the electronic card the bottom of this Newsbar, by Pippa Ruse, and the card sent via email on December 29, by Brandt Knapp.

Dorian Booth


Ilsa Falis

Elise Renwick


Leigh Stewart


Dorian Booth


Diego Arango


Nathaniel Wooten

COMMUNITY SERVICE > CANSTRUCTION

In October, Joeb Moore & Partners participated in the Greenwich Canstruction Competition. Participating architecture firms designed and built large scale designs made from cans of food. After exhibiting the designs, the cans used for construction were donated to Neighbor to Neighbor, which feeds those in need in our area. Joeb Moore & Partners extends a special thanks to Andy and Pam Kauffman for their generous support towards purchasing cans.

Joeb Moore & Partners entry: can-scape  

Our Canstruction was derived from an interest in using the constraints of cans to create a unique and abstract form, while also adhering to a can’s basic intention: stacking.  Conceived as a contoured landscape of concentrically stacked rings, the sculpture creates a pixilated approximation of a three-dimensional relief map in which color ranges from cool to warm as the landscape rises.  A landscape conceived in this way not only references land (where the contents of the cans originates), but it also allows for can variety, each color representing a different canned food.  The cans are positioned to present a dominant solid color, but also to call attention to the nutrition label, the standard symbol that reveals a cans true value.  Finally, within the seemingly fluid can-scape three cratered pinnacles emerge, one thin and tall, one short and wide, and one in between, creating a proportional harmony of forms, all in relative scale to the human observer.

 

Canstruction Team:
Nate Wooten
Jason Bond
Dorian Booth
Nancy Kessler
Pippa Ruse
Diego Arango
Ilsa Falis
Brandt Knapp
Construction
Detail                                                                                                                                         can-scape

 

Pippa, Jason, Nancy, Dorian, and Nate celebrate a complete can-scape 

 

 

TRAVEL:
 
OFFICE FIELD TRIP 1.0 > Fallingwater > Mill Run, PA > Frank Lloyd Wright
Fallingwater was completed in 1939 as the weekend country residence of the Kaufman family, owners of the Pittsburgh Kauffman’s Department Store. Frank Lloyd Wright was a close friend of the family, and designed here a home carefully in synch with its site; the home’s masonry seems to form part of the hill into which it’s built. Despite its spanning elevation, Wright emphasized the homes’ horizontality with wide terraces, low ceiling heights, and carefully crafted details. The house’s cantilever over the cascading Bear Run stream not only underscores this horizontality, but it also invites a natural water feature into the living space.
The home is now a museum, and Joeb Moore & Partners enjoyed a guided tour through the home and the grounds. The house contains a significant art collection, including works by Pablo Picasso and Diego Rivera. Nearly all of the furniture was custom designed by Wright, and the home just underwent a significant renovation.
Staff Photos:


OFFICE FIELD TRIP 1.1 > Pittsburgh > Mattress Factory Art Museum

Another highlight of our trip was a visit to the the Mattress Factory, a contemporary art museum located in Pittsburgh’s historic North Side. Two reused buildings house four floors of large scale installations. The collection includes works by James Turell, Sarah Oppenheimer, and Yayoi Kusama. The museum also has a renowned artist residency program.
Staff Photos:
Sarah Oppenheimer, 610-3356, 2008, aircraft grade plywood, framing structure
Sarah Oppenheimer, 610-3356, 2008
Yayoi Kusama, Infinity Dots Mirrored Room, 1996. glass, Formica, black light, decals
FIELD TRIP 2.0 > 55DHL > Greenwich, CT
The office staff visited this waterfront project by Joeb Moore & Partners, which is close to completion. You may remember that 55DHL was the “Build” feature in last summer’s Newsbar.
NEWPORT, RI > Isaac Bell House > McKim Mead and White
This Fall, Joeb visited Newport, RI to give a lecture at the AIA Residential Architects Network Symposium. Joeb lived and worked in Newport in 1978 and it was here he first came into contact with the “American City of House and Cottage.”  In particular, he was captivated by the material invention of the Redwood Library of 1750, the oldest lending library in America, by America’s first architect, Peter Harrison and by the spatial elasticity, material invention and overall design elegance of the Issac Bell House of 1883, one of the finest examples of American Shingle style architecture. Both buildings were remarkably innovative in their day, and both are masterworks of American architecture.
The Issac Bell House continues to hold Joeb’s curiosity and admiration even today. It was the first house designed by the firm McKim, Mead and White and one of the only true collaborative projects that all three partners were actively involved in.  Built in 1883, following after the Newport Tennis Casino, the house synthesizes many cultures and traditions simultaneously. It is also modern and progressive in its vision of residential design and life. McKim, Mead and White did not revive history, they but it through a sieve. They refused to simply copy European architecture, rather they played with history, material, patterns and cultural tropes. As John Tschirch elegantly notes, “The Issac Bell House is an extraordinary fusion of design elements from a variety of historical and exotic sources.”  It is, in my view, a brilliant and elegant synthesis of Old English and European architecture, modernized-colonial American light wood-frame architecture (shingle style), and Japanese-inspired open floor plan and exotic ornaments.
Joeb’s photos:

SCOTTSDALE, AZ > Taliesin West > Frank Lloyd Wright
Taliesin West was Frank Lloyd Wright’s personal winter home, studio, and architectural campus. The building is currently home to the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture, and also houses the Frank Lloyd Wright foundation. The building’s walls are made of local desert rock, put into wood forms, and filled with concrete. The house is continuously engaged with its desert setting, and systematically allows natural light into its rooms.

LONG ISLAND CITY > Socrates Sculpture Park > Curtain > Brandt Knapp and Jerome Haferd
Brandt Knapp, staff architect at Joeb Moore & Partners, and Jerome Haferd designed and built “Curtain,” the winning design of Folly, a competition co-sponsored by the Architectural League of New York and the Socrates Sculpture Park. It invited emerging architects and designers to propose contemporary interpretations of the architectural folly, traditionally a fanciful, small-scale building or pavilion sited in a garden or landscape to frame a view or serve as conversation piece.
Curtain is an object in the landscape as well as a mutable, spatial experience at close range. The invention of Curtain
lies in the coupling of a ‘soft’ material to a rigid but playful underlying structure. The folly rests on a 25 square grid, with
an inner 9 square enclosure that transforms via opening ‘beads’.  The repetition of the beaded strands creates a
ghost-like form and it is experienced and perceived in multiple ways both physically and visually. There are three
primary components which make up the architecture; a wood structure, steel joints and the curtain made of white,
plastic chain. This armature forms a series of frames beginning with an 8′ high, rectilinear proscenium at the front
“façade”. The grid of slender, wooden posts meets a triangulated canopy of equally thin, but sturdy wooden members.
The chain link partitions are a play between ‘curtain walls’ and fixed boundaries.
Open through March 2013

 

 

MANHATTAN > Park Avenue Armory > the event of a thread > Ann Hamilton
Visual artist Ann Hamilton combines the ephemeral presence of time with the material tactility to create a new large-scale installation for the Wade Thompson Drill Hall. The event of a thread references the building’s architecture, as well as the individual encounters and congregational gatherings that have animated its rich social history. A multisensory affair, the work draws together readings, sound, and live events within a field of swings that together invite visitors to connect to the action of each other and the work itself, illuminating the experience of the singular and collective body, the relationship between the animal and the human. The address of the readers to the pigeons shifts at the end of each day, when a vocalist on the drill hall’s balcony serenades their release to flight. Each day’s song is cut with a record lathe, and the resulting recording is played back the next day. (Park Avenue Armory)
MANHATTAN > Discovering Columbus > Tatzu Nishi
Artist Tatzu Nishi reimagines the 13-foot tall statue of Christopher Columbus at Columbus Circle inside a contemporary New York City living room. The installation invites viewers to interact with the statue, often unobserved from below, on a completely new scale. The statue rises to 75 feet atop a granite column. Nishi designed the floating riving room to house it, accessible from six flights of stairs.

RECENT PUBLICATIONS:
INTERIOR DESIGN MAGAZINE > Best of Year Awards > December 2012

 

 
NEUTRA GLEN RESIDENCE > Kitchen Award Honoree
SULLIVAN OFFICE NYC > Small Office Award Honoree