COUNTRY HOMES

Ranging outside our base in New York City, BumpZoid has built homes from Vermont to Virginia, (and a project in the Caribbean). Small working huts, poolhouses, a windmill, a car shed, all receive the same attention as the seaside ‘cottage’.

Country work runs from rustic to sophisticated. We are comfortable with the rural conceits of farm, country manor, shingle style and modernist retreat. [When we cited the Classic-meeting-Farm design line direct from Vicenza to Virginia, Ada Louise Huxtable called it ‘a certain staggering bravura’.]

The free standing home and its outbuildings are the most personal reflections of owner and architect. The style, planning and construction all arise from the specifics of site, time, scale and personal expression.

COUNTRY HOMES >>

TOWNHOUSES

Attached urban homes are a type specific to certain cites. In NYC the same typology with varieties in style and planning ranges from the early 1800s to the early 1900s. Our goal is always to respect the historic tradition of the street while personalizing and modernizing the building.

The challenges of a confined structure lead to inventive interventions, pushing up and out and through the building to maximize limited light, circulation, and green opportunities. Both restoration and modern construction techniques are brought to the fore.

TOWNHOUSES >>

COMMERCIAL

Commercial work includes the essential but non-glamorous work of feasibility studies, programming and use analysis, reviews of work letters and alteration proposals, etc.  Efficiency of space, cost valuation, and demanding time schedules continually hover over a quest for image reinforcement and corporate comfort. In the end it is about making places where people spend an enormous portion of their lives, happily and productively, and where clients, users, patrons interact efficiently and pleasantly.

A chance encounter with a turbaned hitchhiker led to construction of our first commercial work, the Golden Temple Emporium, a combination health food and earth shoe store in New Haven. Our work ranges from small shops and single offices to building lobbies, multi-floor office interiors, boutique trading floors, and media production facilities.

COMMERCIAL >>

INTERIORS

A New York architect could spend a lifetime never building from the ground up, but plowing through the interior structure and mechanicals of existing buildings. Apartments are joined, lofts broken up or expanded sideways; duplexes, triplexes and penthouses are carved in complex sections through built structures. 

Trying to maintain the graciousness of space, while utilizing every inch, it is an ongoing battle for light, room, and utility coupled with a particular study of materiality, movement, history, and openness.

INTERIORS >>

UNBUILT WORK

Projects remain unbuilt for many reasons. Often ambition outstrips resources. Occasionally good ideas are not quite right in time or place.  Early stillborn and abandoned projects hang around and like failed competitions stew, percolate and sometimes find their way into future arguments.

UNBUILT WORK >>