Kate Chambers Beck has followed her passion for architecture from Charlottesville to the Midwest to Alabama and—finally—back home to the Blue Ridge. The C’ville native recently opened a local office for her firm, ’bama-based Tippett Sease Baker Architecture, and took time to chat with Abode about the homecoming.
Abode: What made you want to bring TSB to Charlottesville?
Kate Chambers Beck: The firm is just turning 8 years old in a couple months, and I’ve been with them since they opened. We started in Montgomery, Alabama, which is where the three partners are from, and the main office is in Birmingham. But I grew up in Charlottesville, and my husband and I wanted to move back. I sat down with the partners and said, “I think this would be a great location for us to open an office.”
How were you able to sell the idea?
Both my parents are architects in different capacities working locally, and so growing up here, I knew that what we have to offer is a little bit different than other firms in the area. And, there’s a great design community here. Being able to work with colleagues here, whether that be designers or structural engineers or others, I knew that that all existed here. We’re really excited to tap into that.
Where does TSB fit among the architects in the area?
There are some really wonderful firms in Charlottesville that span the range of architectural types, but a lot of them are more traditional, which is great and makes sense in the area. We are also traditional architects, but we focus on kind of the American vernacular, so really looking at the local architecture of a place—the building materials, historically and today, that exist there, the forms traditionally that would have existed in those places—and using all that to create modern family homes. We are looking at history to give us clues as to how we can design today, but with a focus on the local language as opposed to high classical language.
So local styles, native materials, and other region-based cues?
Local materials definitely play a big part of it and can really tie a building to its place. Then you’re also thinking about location, not just in terms of Virginia, for example, but thinking about city settings versus rural settings. The projects are tied to the exact, specific site that they’re located on.
Your firm has designed some opulent homes. What’s your niche?
A lot of times we’re working on quite large residences, but not always. We love taking small projects as well, and just making a jewel box of a building. I think for us, it’s really about breaking down the scale of even large projects so that you’re almost integrating a village of structures into the landscape.
Thinking in regional terms, what are your goals now that you’re here?
As with many firms today, we’re not necessarily tied to our physical office locations. We’ve always had a pretty broad reach in terms of where we’re building and working. So, I’ll hopefully be taking on more projects in the Charlottesville area, but that’s just one area of the region that we’re hoping to bring ourselves into. We do already have some projects in Virginia, and it’s been great to have the physical presence here and connect with people.
If you could sum up TSB’s style, what would it be?
Each house we do is completely unique and individual to the client. So, it’s not like we have one house that just says, “Oh, this is what TSB does.” We see ourselves as the hands of our client, trying to bring their vision to life. It really is an individualized process with the client to ask, “How do you live your life, what are you looking for, what do you want to see when you come home, what’s the most important thing to you?” There are so many different facets to the way we live, and it’s such a personal process, which is something I love about it.
How have your first six months gone?
For me, personally, it’s such an inspiring area to be working. We’re actually moving into a much bigger office space on Main Street and expanding our operations here. I do think that it’s a really great market and a great design community to be part of, and I’ve definitely felt that even just being here for a little while.
