1964 was probably a great year in some ways—for one thing, it was the year the Beatles first hit the U.S.—but not for kitchens. Nowadays, folks tend to find the carved-up spaces and retro finishes of midcentury kitchens to be a bit constraining. So when Justin and Jen Knippen bought their four-bedroom house in Ivy […]
Landscape architect Pete O’Shea spent his youth playing in the fields, orchards, and woods of his Central Massachusetts neighborhood, where “we didn’t really know that what we were exploring daily was this incredibly dynamic landscape of glacial topography, dwindling agriculture, and second growth forests laced with old stone walls, boulders, ponds, and streams,” he said. […]
Kids and hospitals are not a fun combination, but at least the visit can be as convenient as possible—and maybe even educational. When UVA Health System opened its new pediatric outpatient building, the Battle Building, in June, its aim was to revamp the experience of visiting the hospital, for both patients and their parents. For […]
Sheilah Michaels credits her father, a builder who made her a toolbox when she was 4 years old and often took her to job sites, with planting the design seed early. Over the years, Michaels’ passion never wavered, and she’s spent more than 20 years working as an interior designer, buyer, and visual merchandising manager. […]
When Sheilah Michaels was asked to create a child’s bedroom for last spring’s Shelter for Help in Emergency’s Design House, she turned to the pages of some of her favorite children’s books for inspiration. “I wanted to capture the enchanting images from The Wind in the Willows, Charlotte’s Web, and The Lion, the Witch and […]
Anyone who’s been on a house hunt knows closets are a relatively modern development. And if you’re into vintage homes, you’ll probably have to compromise on built-in storage space. “Houses that are 100 years old, back then people didn’t really have closets,” said architect Kate Tabony, lead designer for Charlottesville-based Alloy Workshop. “Maybe it’s a […]
Allison Mitchell helps people sort through and systematize the keeping of their stuff. But really, she says, they’re redefining self-love. “The irony for my clients is that they fear losing something, so they keep everything, then they lose the something they really wanted to keep,” said Mitchell, a Charlottesville-based organizing consultant for Richmond firm Abundance […]
It is commonplace for architects to speak of “bringing the outside in”—usually via plentiful glass and a toolkit of other tricks. When Richard Williams describes his firm’s design process on a Rappahannock County home, that familiar goal—connecting inhabitants to the landscape—takes on an unusual cast. “On our first site visit,” he said of his clients, […]
To Cole Burrell, landscape designer, a garden is an extension of a house. “There’s a million styles and a million vocabularies,” he said, “but none makes any sense unless it makes sense with the house.” One of his Albemarle projects illustrates that principle with a garden that seems to spring organically from the spirit of […]