Chesapeake Home

Turning Dreams Into Reality

Wonderful homes are often the product of carefully planned architectural designs, and in many cases these designs were
born of dreams. Architects have the ability to bring those dreams to life. By listening to clients’ wishes and desires and then combining their dreams with knowledge of tradition and a keen structural sensibility, the architects profiled in this issue mix art and science to take visions and transform them into homes.

Catherine Purple Cherry, AIA
Catherine Purple Cherry Architects, P.C.
Annapolis, Maryland

“Recognizing that everyone has the ability to affect and change other people’s lives,” may be the single most significant guideline Catherine Purple Cherry, AIA considers in her work as an architect. She feels that architects can affect lives in ways that many professionals can not—her ultimate satisfaction comes from making her clients “happier in general, more organized, or just delighted when they step into a room.” She continues, “architects can make lives less chaotic by the way they organize spaces and the things in them—they can make people happier by recognizing that light and color have a powerful impact on emotions.”
 

The basic structure of this home was drastically redesigned and a 2,800 square foot addition incorporated the new kitchen and family room, two new children’s bedrooms, a full bath, and a mudroom. The exterior features a new waterfront deck with terraced levels, stacked stonewalls, mahogany wall-cap seats, new windows and siding, and decorative brackets and trelliswork.	The goals for this waterfront home included a major renovation and expansion of the existing kitchen, the creation of a new office area, and a two-car garage. The 1,800 square foot addition also includes, an exterior two-person shower for bathing in complete privacy in full view of the Chesapeake Bay.
Sensitive to the context of the neighborhood, the architectural design of this 3,000 square foot, two-story, Shingle-style, waterfront home located in Annapolis, Maryland, doubled the size of the pre-existing structure while still retaining the same basic footprint of the original one story cottage	A custom cherry kitchen helps restore elegance to this Washington D.C. 1920s Tudor.

Photography by Eric Salsbery–Courtesy of EBS Photography

Located in historic downtown Annapolis, Maryland, Cherry and her team of architects make it a point to focus on the effect they will have on clients looking for a custom residential design. Although projects range from new construction to remodeling and additions and client locations reach from North Carolina to New Hampshire, Cherry’s firm specializes in waterfront and critical area properties. To categorize her projects, she offers, “I do not limit my projects to a certain size or type as long as my client desires a project that is thoughtfully and creatively designed.”

In addition to thoughtful, creative designs, Cherry provides clients with a full range of services including interior design and construction administration. Her primary goal as an architect is to “provide clients with fabulous, functional, well-designed and well-built projects within the constraints of budget and time.”
According to Cherry, successful design should also “take into consideration the personalities, desires and tastes of the individuals living or working in the space, and be considerate to the environment into which it is being placed.” And, “Good design should not only be beautiful to look at but should also be wonderful to experience.”

But moreover, Cherry is working to create “spaces that inspire.” While a majority of her work is residential, she is also interested in using her skills to design churches, schools, and nursing homes—structures, like the home, that are imbued with the power to console, motivate, and inspire.

Inspiration—that’s a tall order if you ask me, but when asked to discuss some of the challenges she faces as an architect, Cherry responds, “Challenges are minimal because we extensively research and thoroughly document all projects, and we effectively and considerately communicate to all parties.”
As if architectural design, project management, and a bit of interior design aren’t enough to keep her busy, Cherry is also an active member of the AIA Chesapeake Bay Chapter. She has served as chapter President, and has also edited AIA publications Perspective and Freehand. With all of these responsibilities to contend with, Cherry still finds time to bring her work home—she is currently restoring and adapting a circa 1740 house, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Laura Melville Thomas, AIA
Melville Thomas Architects, Inc.
Baltimore, Maryland

Ever since she was 14 years old, Laura Thomas knew she wanted to be an architect, and after formal training at Virginia Tech, she began working in Boston and then Baltimore as a commercial architect. Soon after moving to Baltimore, she gravitated toward residential design and founded Melville Thomas Architects, Inc. in 1987. As principal of this firm, one of Thomas’s goals is to keep-up with current industry technologies and developments.
 

This two-story addition in Baltimore City features an exercise room, an upstairs family room and kitchen that opens to a spacious covered porch. A convenient storage area located below the porch is accessible through three arched doorways.	For this Baltimore City home, a gable was designed to match the existing architecture. In addition, a new kitchen, a mudroom, and a breakfast bay were added within the confines of the original footprint.
The breakfast area provides a comfortable window to nature.	The sunny family room of this Baltimore City addition incorporates a large fireplace constructed using stone that matches the home’s original architecture.

Photography by Anne Gummerson

To maintain a perspective on educational trends and provide experience for the next generation of architects, Melville Thomas regularly hires architectural students. Their fresh ideas and new insights help solidify the firm’s atmosphere where “success is directly related to the quality of employees in a stimulating, collegial environment.” In designing a home, Thomas certainly capitalizes on various technologies including computer modeling and computer aided drafting (CAD), but at the same time she recognizes the importance of “doing things the old-fashioned way.” For example, “building models is a great way of communicating 3-dimensional information to clients.”

While Thomas’s firm specializes in architectural design, facility management consulting, and master planning for both commercial and residential clients, the latter make a majority of her business. Interestingly, mixing her strong background in commercial architecture with her current residential focus has taught her to “look at commercial spaces like residential spaces.” After all, in a sense, people “reside” in commercial properties, too.

According to Thomas, one benefit of residential architecture, though, is designing for the end user. Thomas finds that developing one-to-one relationships with her residential clients is very satisfying. In this way her success and the firm’s “is measured not in how we build buildings, but how we build relationships.”

Building these client relationships, according to Thomas, relies on “listening carefully, communicating accurately, defining goals well, meeting schedules, and generally exceeding client expectations.” Thomas feels that it is also important to develop strong relationships with builders. At the same time, though, she realizes that it is necessary for the contractor to be the client’s contractor, not the architect’s. At the end of the job, one measure of success for Thomas is that she, the client, and the builder “are all still buddies.”

But the relationships she hopes to have engendered with her work do not stop with the parties directly involved. Thomas also hopes that her designs will not only “fit-in” but be welcome in the community. In addition to the satisfaction Thomas gains from designing a home or addition that works well for the family, it is most rewarding when there is “A sense of making something—something that lasts, that is well-balanced, well-proportioned, something that makes a good neighbor.” In summing up the many rewarding aspects of her job, Thomas stated, “Architecture gives me the opportunity to be creative and to see things constructed or built . . . in the end I can’t see myself doing anything else.” I think the 14-year-old Thomas would be pleased.

David M. Miles, AIA
The Drawing Board, Inc.
Annapolis, Maryland

Nearly twenty years ago when David M. Miles, AIA, President and founder of The Drawing Board, Inc., began practicing in Annapolis, Maryland he couldn’t help but be drawn to projects situated along the banks of the Chesapeake Bay. At The Drawing Board, Miles and staff design a wide range of projects from restaurants, private schools, churches and medical offices, but the majority of their work is designing single-family homes with a focus on waterfront homes. In focusing on waterfront homes, The Drawing board has forged relationships with builders such as Owings Brothers who also find a majority of their projects along the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries.

The incorporation of angles, cantilevers, porches, decks and patios breaks down the barriers of interior and exterior space. The site itself becomes part of the house. Owings Brothers Contracting, Eldersburg, MD	The view of the Magothy through the trees from the upper-level sitting area and deck gives the home an intimate tie to nature. The tree trunk table seems to emerge from the hardwood floor as if the house were built on the trees. Owings Brothers Contracting, Eldersburg, MD
Architect: David Miles. Photography by Bob Creamer	The dining area, tucked into the corner allows a panoramic vista to function as an elegant backdrop to the meal. Owings Brothers Contracting, Eldersburg, MD

Photography by Bob Creamer

According to Miles, fostering these relationships and working together with clients and builders are crucial to the success of any project. “Creating a home is a very unique relationship between client, who has a need and a dream, architect, who interprets the dream and creates the vision, and builder, who crafts a life-size model of the vision—bringing dream to life.” Each member of the team has an important role in the overall project, and “the best homes are a result of mutual cooperation and teamwork.”

In designing and working with a client Miles, thinks of it as a collaboration with them to create their dream home. He encourages and allows as much input as clients want. Philosophically, he is inclined to assist clients in expressing their desires and dreams for their homes. As he begins to form a relationship with client, Miles develops an architectural vision to embody their wishes in context with the unique considerations intrinsic to each site, “giving them design alternatives and leading them to make an informed choice.”

Because many of his projects grace the Chesapeake Bay coastline, his clients are often challenged by “the decreasing availability and increasing cost of buildable land.” As attractive properties dwindle and prices skyrocket, in many cases his clients are purchasing property with existing structures intending to tear down or substantially rehab and redesign the existing home. While demolishing or significantly remodeling an existing home is often more work than starting from scratch, many Bay area residents are happy to have endured the additional aggravation—and it is no wonder when you consider what a home on the water has to offer.

According to Miles, “The expansive vistas on the water, with its ever changing patterns of light and reflections, are wonderful design elements to use.” To capture such vistas, Miles uses windows to expand the room out into nature—into the outdoors. Additionally, he makes a concerted effort to orient every room in the home so that it has either a direct or indirect view of the water. In waterfront homes, Miles’s primary objective is to design each home in a way that creates the sense of “a constant connection to the water.”