Builders and architects turn to reclaimed materials and historic elements to build tradition into high-performance new homes and remodels.
-
Vertical construction for the first phase should begin in the spring, and the builder has completed its environmental impact survey for phase two.
2009 Builder's Choice, Merit Award, Senior housing
2009 Builder's Choice, Merit Award, Live/Work project
2009 Builder's Choice, Merit Award, Adaptive re-use project
2009 Builder's Choice, Grand Award, Adaptive re-use project
Rehabs, retrofits, and re-dos may offer a lifeline to builders in tough times.
-
Hillwood Development and Scala Real Estate Partners will help finance the $2 billion redevelopment of 770 acres on Hunters Point and Candlestick Point.
2008 Builder's Choice Grand Award Winner
2008 Builder's Choice Grand Award Winner
Old buildings are reincarnated as hot properties through adaptive reuse.
-
Agoos/Lovera Architects was challenged with converting an early–20th-century Connecticut horse barn into a recreation facility and guesthouse for family gatherings. Although most of the changes were internal, the team carefully considered the barn's history and architectural details when choosing finishes and furnishings for an open gathering space complete with a great room, bar, kitchen, billiard room, and upstairs guest quarters. It also opened and widened the barn doors to connect the interior more directly with the picturesque landscape.
-
When it comes to the adaptive reuse of churches, especially those with historic easements, one thing really matters: windows. Just ask architect Jai Singh Khalsa, whose firm has been repurposing churches and other institutional buildings since 1980. “We're currently doing a number of buildings that belong to the archdiocese [of Boston],” says Khalsa. “Every church is a little different. The window pattern in old Catholic churches isn't as good for conversion. You need to put more holes in the building.”
-
These six heavy concrete buildings were operating, albeit inefficiently, as cold storage for a wholesale fruit and vegetable market when architect Pappageorge/Haymes purchased them for condo loft conversions. Located in the South Water Market historic district, the 926 units are within financial reach of first-time buyers, thanks to their compact floor plans averaging 1,055 square feet and a property tax freeze that came with compliance with its landmark status.
In The Gulch, Nashville's newest redevelopment area, a nifty loft project rises up through an old warehouse.
IT'S EASY TO COME UP WITH A LIKELY story behind this stately home in Richmond Hill, Ga. The mature oaks, aged brick, graceful white columns, and plantation location bring to mind images straight out of Gone With the Wind. Surely, this must be some antebellum mansion that's been passed down from one family member to another, lovingly cared for over the past two centuries.
FOR YEARS, NOBODY PAID MUCH attention to the aging Sears store that anchored a hill in Tenleytown, a Northwest Washington neighborhood just south of the Maryland-District line. When the concrete, curvilinear, Deco-inspired store opened in 1941 it made quite a splash, especially the two ramps that swooped up and down from the store's novel rooftop parking lot.
-
ADAPTIVE REUSE PROJECTS OFTEN bring with them a fair amount of headaches. Historic designations, layers of municipal approvals, and constrained construction sites are just a few of the concerns that builders and developers often have to juggle with these kinds of endeavors. But adapting a building for a new use while retaining its historic features—the generally accepted definition of adaptive reuse—can have a big payoff if it's done right. Buyers just plain love saying they live in a former church or an old brewery. Or, in the case of these three projects, on top of an old Sears building, in a former plantation's rice mill, or, believe it or not, inside a prison that was once home to Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, infamous for their murder trial and execution in the 1920s.
THE THREE-STORY COLONIAL building (circa 1895) that sparked this adaptive reuse project occupied less than a third of a long, skinny lot. But space is at a premium in Georgetown, and architect Stephen Vanze made the most of it. Leaving the original historic structure (in the photo, the second building from the right, now designated for retail), intact, he fashioned a brick townhouse at the other end of the lot, then filled the gap between the two buildings with commercial space.
AS THE MILLENNIUM DAWNED, THE Braden Fellman Group, developer and builder of Greenwood Lofts in Atlanta, was poised to take advantage of a number of hot-button trends: infill construction, loft living, and for-sale rather than for-rent apartments. The company had almost 20 years of experience in renovating older apartment buildings with architectural charm, all with in-town locations. That naturally led to the world of lofts and adaptive reuse. “Around 2000, after watching the markets, we began to move from a rental product to a for-sale product, which brought us to Greenwood Lofts, which was right in our own Virginia-Highland neighborhood,” says Preston Snyder, Braden Fellman's president.