Gardner Architects LLC

canal house

The Intracoastal Waterway runs along the east coast of the United States, connecting the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico and comprising many kinds of waterways.  This project sits on one of those waterways – the Lewes and Rehoboth Canal – in a coastal maritime forest with sandy dunes, and facing grassy marshes and perennial wetlands. 

The design agenda called for a sensitive response to climate and site. The house is sited to maximize views to the canal and wetlands, while providing a variety of protected and shaded exterior spaces. The form of the house is split by a glazed entry foyer, offering views along a continuous boardwalk from the streetside through the foyer to the canal and marsh.   

Creating a shaded place, saving all the trees on site, capturing yet sheltering from sun and breeze, maximizing views, creating habitat – these are some of the project strategies we employed to decrease energy demand and enhance building-site synergies.  The project focuses on passive and active sustainable strategies in order to address these goals. By creating a strategically shaded, highly insulated and vapor-managed building envelope, employing ground source heat and cooling, and an energy recovery ventilator, energy costs are reduced and comfort is enhanced. Carefully positioned operable windows and skylights, including in the open, gabled stairway, allow for natural ventilation and take advantage of the stack effect.  The strategic location of shading devices – exterior solar shades and a trellis – rounds out the suite of passive approaches.  

The home is a home for the beach, not a suburban home transplanted to the beach.  The design recalls the traditions of the cabins that used to comprise this community.  The heart of the home is where the towels are! Spaces for circulation, gathering, and chance encounters of the extended family and friends who gather and hang about the inside and outsides spaces.   The kitchen bridges the interior and exterior, linking a porch with the living and dining areas.   Materials are matter of fact, rough-hewn, utilitarian.  A home for the grill, kayaks, laundry, outdoor showers, and beach storage were as important as spaces for sleeping, eating, and gathering.

Project Team
1200AE Architectural Engineers PLLC 
Beachwood Inc.
Jennifer Gilmer Kitchen and Bath Ltd
John Hynes & Associates
Jordan Honeyman Landscape Architects 

flint hill

The house is a porch....  

Rappahannock County, a county located in the northern Piedmont region of Virginia, and adjacent to Shenandoah National Park, is the home for our project at Flint Hill. Much of the land in Rappahannock County consists of small mountains that culminate in the west at the Blue Ridge mountains of Shenandoah National Park. The county is primarily rural in nature, and as a certified International Dark-Sky Park it is one of the last places on the East Coast with a view of the Milky Way. These characteristics - rolling, mountainous, foothills to the Shenandoah, with clear skies allowing views for great distances - form the context for this project.

The design agenda called for a house compound comprising living and sleeping wings, carport, garden, pool and bocce court, connected to the sixty-four acre site. Interior and exterior spaces are connected to each other, where movement between and among them allows for constant engagement with the distant views of the Blue Ridge Mountains.

The house forms are borrowed from local farm outbuildings such as grain storage sheds. Oriented to capture light and breeze, two wings are guided by the site topography and split by the view to the Blue Ridge mountains captured upon entry. With the view and topography demanding that the house be oriented towards the west, shade is created by the porch and exterior motorized shades. While the orientation of the house runs counter to conventional wisdom regarding the solar gain that comes from a westerly orientation, the strategies for shading systems, building envelope, and mechanical systems achieved a HERS rating of 21, incorporating an 8kW photovoltaic system.

Along the predominantly east-west axis, spaces unfold in layers wherein the living room opens to a deep terrace-porch overlooking the meadow. The spaces along the almost north-south axis are aligned with each other and blend interior to exterior, living to pool, via views and materials such as tile and cast-stone pavers. There are several kinds of landscapes that comprise the setting of the house compound - meadow, manicured, growing landscapes. These landscapes join the buildings to the hillsides and natural terraces.

Team Credit:  
1200AE Architectural Engineers PLLC				
Gregg Bleam Landscape Architects
Jennifer Gilmer Kitchen & Bath 	
Josh Catlett Engineering

Photography:
Scouting photos - John Cole Photo
Landscape and evening porch photos - Emily Hagen Photography
Miscellaneous photos - Amy Gardner

treehouse

Residential building fabric is all too often razed in order to create new residential structures that maximize the zoning envelope, to the detriment of the neighborhood fabric and scale. 

By contrast the design approach for this project integrates analysis of typical characteristics of construction vis-a-vis the era of construction, building-site relationships, and sustainable strategies in order to join competing interests, save the building and preserve its role in the community. 

This house, built in the 1960s, faces south on a wooded lot in Bethesda, Mary- land. The house had limited and lifeless connections to its site, and a dearth of habitable spaces that adjoined the landscape.  

With excessive energy consumption, poor construction characteristic of its era compounded by considerable deterioration as the baseline condition in which we found the home, the house then suffered a major blow--burst pipes rendered the house uninhabitable. This last event prompted the owners to either raze or resuscitate their home. 

We implemented passive approaches for daylight and ventilation, a new vapor-managed building envelope, a state-of-the art insulation strategy, and updated high-efficiency mechanical systems.  

We stewarded the development of a masterplan that manages stormwater, creates habitat for indigenous species, and selectively embraces trees thereby preserving the quality of the community. Our strategy saved the existing building, preserve the site and the existing trees contributed to the preservation of the neighborhood history. 

The renovated home includes 25% increased fenestration with glazing type and area tuned towards exposure, and a new building envelope, new heating and cooling systems.  Taken together with a suite of other decisions that grew out of our early energy modeling of the project, the project achieved a 35% improvement over code baseline. 

Bringing in daylight and natural cross ventilation, the new design maximizes the benefits of available sun in winter and abundant shade in summer provided by the wooded context while retaining the tie between house and site that inspired the original design. 

river's edge

A new home joins an established community on a bluff to the river below. A breezeway links the house to the site and the landscape and water. An open plan connects entry to south terraces; exterior decks and terraces are joined to interior spaces; living, dining and kitchen are interconnected, with the kitchen as the "hub" and center of the joined interior and exterior spaces.  North-facing galleries connect the breezeway to all the south-facing living spaces.  In fact, every room faces towards the south -- built-in shading and solar protection are calculated and designed to provide shade in the summer and allow passive gain in the winter. Ground source heating and cooling, a solar photovoltaic system, and a high-performing building envelope round out the home's response to energy, climate and comfort.

Team:
1200 Architectural Engineers	
Charles P Johnson & Associates
Campion Hruby Landscape Architects
Wyant Heating and Cooling
Jay Hall and Associates
Coventry Lighting
Steele Engineering
GeoLabs 

around the courtyard

This project for the new construction of netzero buildings around a courtyard comprises a single family home with detached ADU.  A sensitive approach to the neighborhood maximizes the use of the tight semi-urban lot yet maintains areas for gardening and gathering.  A high-performing building envelope including a "monopoly roof", passive and active sustainable strategies including a solar PV system, and balanced ventilation round out the suite of energy-saving and comfort enhancing approaches.   A modern open plan for each building connects to the courtyard, yet allows two different sets of inhabitants to enjoy the landscape with privacy. 

Project Team
1200 Architectural Engineering
Jay Hall and Associates

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Gardner Architects LLC

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