For years, we knew we wanted open concept living spaces—the kitchen spilling into the dining area, spilling into the sitting room —but we didn’t necessarily know why. It just felt right, and that was enough. Turns out, what we were working toward was universal design, a concept of making spaces usable by as many different […]
For years, we knew we wanted open concept living spaces—the kitchen spilling into the dining area, spilling into the sitting room —but we didn’t necessarily know why. It just felt right, and that was enough. Turns out, what we were working toward was universal design, a concept of making spaces usable by as many different […]
Most architecture, by nature, wants to be noticed. But sometimes design aims to fly under the radar—to seamlessly blend with its surroundings. That’s a tall order when the project in question is a 16.3-acre, multi-million-dollar roadway interchange that helped inspire a decade or more of dogged citizen protests (not to mention legal action) before it […]
Certain people are born architects, Julie Dixon says. “I spent the better part of my childhood during church, class and road trips dreaming up and drawing floor plans on scraps of paper or on the edge of class notes. It’s the kind of thing you just can’t shake.” Her childhood hobby shook the Tennessee native […]
A neighborhood like Glenmore exerts a powerful force on everything within it. The gated golf community east of town is one of those places understood to be more than a collection of houses; there is also a social and aesthetic norm here that can hardly be flouted. Aesthetic conservatism is the byword. Perfect appearances abound as […]
The June issue of ABODE is on stands now! Here’s what you’ll find inside: A Q&A with local architect Christopher Hays, whose global travels inspire his work in Charlottesville and beyond. An historic downtown property, the former Martha Jefferson Hospital goes residential—with 43 new places to live. The latest trend in countertops? Color! But not […]
It’s no wonder that travel is a running theme in Hays+Ewing co-founder Christopher Hays’ explanation of his journey to architecture. The Greenville, South Carolina native has lived in Japan and Italy and journeyed to the Netherlands, Spain, France and Greece for both work and study. It was a trip to Vienna during an undergraduate exchange […]
Who wouldn’t want to live a short walk from the Downtown Mall? That’s an easy question to answer. Slightly trickier: Who wouldn’t want to live in an old hospital? In creating Locust Grove Apartments within a portion of the former Martha Jefferson Hospital, developer Octagon Partners aimed to make the building’s history a plus for […]
Charlottesville isn’t always on top of the latest trends, but that’s not really a bad thing. Several local kitchen designers say our area runs contrary to major national countertop trends in multiple ways, all of which come down to one central theme: color. Or, rather, the lack of it. Soft, muted colors. Bright pops of […]
A true renaissance woman. That’s the best way to describe Elfi Frankfurt, because, while she has been practicing interior design in Keswick for more than 25 years (and in London before that), she’s also designed in arenas from fashion and jewelry to fabrics and carpets—all over the world, including Austria, France and Switzerland. In fact, she […]
You’d never know that Ken Schmalzbach and Karol Forsberg’s house isn’t brand new. It looks as up-to-the-minute as anything Wolf Ackerman has recently designed to be built from the ground up. In fact, this home on Lake Monticello is 31 years old, and the architects are responsible for transforming it from a near-eyesore to a […]